Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:950-954
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Somatization and depression in fibromyalgia syndrome
LJ Kirmayer, JM Robbins and MA Kapusta
Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B. Davis- Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Psychiatric diagnoses, self-reports of symptoms, and illness behavior of 20
fibromyalgia patients and 23 rheumatoid arthritis patients were compared.
The fibromyalgia patients were not significantly more likely than the
arthritis patients to report depressive symptoms or to receive a lifetime
psychiatric diagnosis of major depression. These results do not support the
contention that fibromyalgia is a form of somatized depression.
Fibromyalgia patients, however, reported significantly more somatic
symptoms of obscure origin and exhibited a pattern of reporting more
somatic symptoms, multiple surgical procedures, and help seeking that may
reflect a process of somatization rather than a discrete psychiatric
disorder.
