Health complaints : testing a causal role of activated illness-memory in symptom reporting

Abstract

Medically unexplained (physical) symptoms (MUS, or MUPS) are symptoms that cannot be attributed to organic pathology and they represent a common category of complaints in health care. Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are a humanitarian and economic burden. Among them, pain complaints without organic pathology are the most prevalent. For many years, researchers have tried to answer the question how it is possible that people can have somatic complaints without any medical explanation. The main aim of this thesis was to examine the possible causal role of implicit illness memory or schemata in increased symptom reporting. In this thesis, different techniques were used to manipulate the cognitive schemata related to illness, to examine whether this caused increased symptom reporting. In addition, we examined the cross-sectional and temporal relationships between implicit illness-related memory and symptom reporting among patients with fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. The results offer several promising routes for future studies to examine the role of illness memory in the etiology of somatic complaints. The suffering of many patients with medically unexplained symptoms or subjective health complaints and their impact on our health care costs warrants this kind of research.