S05-03 - Social Evolution of Somatization [E106]

Abstract

Somatization concept should be considered in biopsychosocial integrity. Thispresentation reviews the social aspects of somatization. The description ofsomatization evolved in time in order to include the social aspects. Thedifferences of somatization between societies, somatization concept in westernand Eastern medical thought, modernist theory on the evolution of somatization,research which confirm and which do not confirm the modernist theory werereviewed. The pos-modern approach which constitutes a new paradigm in culturalpsychiatry, prefers to study the mental disorders through the culture, insteadof comparing them cross-culturally. In this context, first the culture-boundsomatization diagnosis of non-Western cultures, then the fashionable diagnosisof Western culture in which the somatization is hiding were reviewed.