Examples of how psychological causes have been postulated for many medical conditions

[Dolphin]

Perhaps others could add to this list.

Also if you think anything is incorrect perhaps you could mention it (i.e. note I'm not saying that the theory is correct, I'm just looking in case the theory was never suggested). One of my Facebook friends posted it as part of a private message (i.e. just to their friends) and said they had done some research to create the list.


Asthma - overbearing mothers

Autism - lack of maternal nuturing

Cancer - repressed anger

Diabetes - psychological and emotional stress

Epilepsy - mental illness

Fibromyalgia - childhood stress, unprocessed negative emotions

Food allergy - psychological issues

Gulf War Syndrome - psychological distress

Heart disease - type-A behavior

Hypertension - psychological stress

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) - neuroticism, introversion

Lupus - self-loathing

Lyme disease - hypochondria

Multiple sclerosis (MS) - hysterical paralysis

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) - hysteria

Rheumatoid arthritis - repressed anger, resentment, aggression

Stomach ulcers - psychological stress

Tuberculosis (TB) - tubercular personality

Ulcerative colitis - interdependent relationships


"We believe that emotional and mental states play a significant role both in “susceptibility” to disease, including cancer, and in “recovery” from all disease. We believe that cancer is often an indication of problems elsewhere in an individual's life, probably aggravated or compounded by a series of stresses six to eighteen months prior to the onset of cancer."

-O. Carl Simonton M.D., 1992

 

[alex3619]

There is an old thread on this from Bob I think. I have seen some very long lists in reading, but do not recall where I read them. There may be hundreds of diseases treated like this, even ignoring the issue that heart disease and cancer are generic labels for a large number of diseases. I am glad to see TB on that list, its one that is often ignored when discussing this.

Its been estimated, and I have no idea of the validity of such estimates, that 10% of the population have one or more rare genetic disorders. We do not know how many such disorders really exist. We lack tests. Some of these patients are at risk of a false diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder.

 

[Murph]

This would be incredibly useful, especially if each example has a link to a primary source so we can reach for them easily in advocacy.

 

[TigerLilea]

I'm sure that Parkinsons's Disease should be on that list.

 

[GreyOwl]

Some doctors are still quite happy to blame mothers, and even to create new diagnoses for those mothers to be able to do so, when it's convenient for those doctors. Saves a lot of testing! Just one anecdatum.

 

[CFS_for_19_years]

Perhaps others could add to this list

Schizophrenia - lack of maternal warmth

 

[Sean]

Hypothyroidism ?

You could save a lot of effort and list space by simply saying most neurological, hormonal, and female dominated disorders.

 

[Murph]

When I wrote my story about Alem Matthees I went looking for a primary source where MS was described as psychological. I couldn't find one.

Part of the problem is terminology. If you google 'multiple sclerosis' that was not a term people used when the condition was not understood.

Even good secondary sources were hard to find. I'm sure the facts are out there but finding them might involve looking through old books and maybe even private communications between doctors.

 

[GreyOwl]

You could save a lot of effort and list space by simply saying most neurological, hormonal, and female dominated disorders.

Period pain - dramatisation

 

[hinterland]

MS was malingering.

Parkinson's was thought to affect morally rigid people like the clergy or old head masters - specifically, the shaking hand movements were said to represent repressed masturbation.

Diabetics were just highly 'irritable' individuals with anger management issues.

TB was an affliction of those with an artistic temperament.

Autism: 'refrigerator mothers'

There're more.....

 

[Little Bluestem]

Tuberculosis (TB) - tubercular personality

This is particularly ludicrous. You could say that about any disease.

-O. Carl Simonton M.D., 1992

He actually said that in 1992?

 

[Little Bluestem]

Parkinson's was thought to affect morally rigid people like the clergy or old head masters - specifically, the shaking hand movements were said to represent repressed masturbation.

This is even more ludicrous that 'tubercular personality'! I am leaving this thread before someone come up with something even worse.

 

[alex3619]

When I wrote my story about Alem Matthees I went looking for a primary source where MS was described as psychological. I couldn't find one.

This has been referenced on PR a few times. There are lots of such sources. One of the issues you face though is they are often pre world wide web. They are also not often in journals listed on Pubmed. You also need to search on the buzzwords, like hysteria, psychogenic, psychosomatic, biopsychosocial, conversion disorder, etc. etc. etc. I have done this in the past though not recently. "Functional" is one of the popular buzzwords for this generation of psychobabbler.

 

[A.B.]

You can go to Google scholar, and search for "illness name psychosomatic" in articles from before 1960 and you'll find a lot. For exaple with rheumatoid arthritis I found these

Psychological Aspects of Rheumatoid Arthritis

The psychological characteristics common to all persons in this series were marked emotional self-restriction (present in all cases and often suggested in the facies and manner) and marked obsessional trends (with perhaps one exception). This self-limiting, emotion-inhibited, rather independent (but passively so) type of personality is not infrequent and may be found associated with various psychosomatic disorders. As thus crudely defined it cannot be regarded as specially related to rheumatoid arthritis in the way that the " allergic personality " and the " peptic ulcer personality " seem to be related to their respective affections. Indeed, from the common-sense point of view, most of the rheumatoid patients could be described as " normal " in that their self-restricting characteristics neither immediately unfitted them for life nor rendered them acutely unhappy. It remains to be seen whether further research will uncover a more specific rheumatoid personality type.

In 9 of the 20 patients in the series, a definite upsetting event anteceded, and seemed to be connected with, the primary emergence of rheumatoid symptoms. External events which precipitated recurrences were noted in 7 cases. The emotional disturbances included shock following acute danger (e.g. air raid; assault by a handbag snatcher), anxiety over finance or the misbehaviour of relatives; fears of loss of a love-object or depression after its loss; paranoid resentment concerning super- iors; frustration at being jilted, &c. However, irrespective of its nature, all the patients dealt with the precipitating emotion in a common way, namely, there was failure or incapacity to give it a liberating expression and "the feelings" were, so to speak, bottled up. This restriction of feeling and-of emotional expression has alreadv been noted as a typical characteristic of rheumatoid patients.

The idea that bottled up emotions cause disease is of course freudian.


Preliminary Report on a Psychosomatic Study of Rheumatoid Arthritis
Psychologic Conflict and Neuromuscular Tension: I. Preliminary Report on a Method, as Applied to Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Special Features of Personality Which Are Common to Certain Psychosomatic Disorders.

Not much has changed. Psychosomatic researchers today are still operating in much the same manner. They're just better organized and it looks more sciencey.

Wasn't Chalder talking about bottled up emotions very recently?

 

[wastwater]

Mix this with religious views that all sickness is sin and it's easy to see where today's thinking on me/cfs comes from

 

[Valentijn]

AIDS - Stress (see HIV/AIDS denialism)

 

[Hajnalka]

AIDS - Stress (see HIV/AIDS denialism)

Yes, someone postet a "scientific" publication on PR (maybe @alex3619). Even after changes in the immune system were detected, "researchers" claimed the physical abnormalities were caused by depression due to the shame of being gay/being a outcast in society.

Saw Unrest yesterday and it talks about hysteria/psychogenic explanations for physical diseases, shows examples throughout history and the institutionalization of women with e.g. MS. Jen Brea says something like, normally with stuff like that, you look back in history and are grateful for how things have changed. But with ME it's different, there was no progress, we're still stuck with the psychogenic explanations from centuries ago. (She of course says it better, can't remember the right English words).

 

[cyclamen]

Shell Shock

 

[Cheshire]

I often see that MS was thought to be hysteria before the use of MRIs was generalised in the 1980s/90s.


I think things are a bit more complicated. Charcot (yes, the same Charcot that trained Freud) proved it was a biological illness back to the 19th century. He was a great neurologist and made several breakthroughs for numerous diseases. He did tons of autopsies and demonstrated there was a correlation between some alterations in the brain and MS symptoms.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3064755/


So before the introduction of MRIs, lots of people got a clinical diagnosis of MS on the basis of a cluster of symptoms that were thought to be characteristic of MS. The problem was, like every clinical diagnosis, it relied completely on the hands of the clinician and the presentation of symptoms. Hence lots of people, because of their atypical presentation, because of some errors made by the doctors, because they had MH issues, and of course because they were women, were thrown out of the MS category. And what was left was... hysteria.


I read somewhere (sorry I can't find the link anymore) the testimony of a neurologist who practised during the spreading of MRIs. He said that it was a real mess when they began to use MRIs on their patients, some showed clear signs of demyelination while some didn't. And many of these patients they had put into the hysterical bin were in fact presenting clear signs of MS on imaging.


Charcot's ideas about hysteria evolved. He first thought that hysterical symptoms were the signs of biological diseases that 19th century tools couldn't discover. After (was it before or after he met Freud, can't remember) he said that hysterical patients were ill due to sexual problems, they were highly suggestible and so on... That's when he started to organise his disgusting shows with women in hysterical crisis.

 

[BurnA]

It would be nice to have references for all the listed and suggested items.