I believe after long thought that there are psychosomatic disorders.
Nice of you to answer,
@EllenGB.
@Valentijn points out the we need to distinguish between emotional response and chronic illness, very different inference being made here. I also think this is a very important distinction to make.
When it comes to
chronic illness, the evidence base does not seem strong to me. Studies rarely use an adequate control group (one suffering from another illness that imposes similar symptoms/limitations). This is true of the IBS literature too.
@TiredSam also has problems with some of the key constructs and I sympathise. Remember the Type D personality debarcle?
Add to that recall bias (more likely to attribute symptoms to prior history if you've been "primed" to do so), publication bias, and citation bias (tendency for psychosomatic studies to cite confirming rather than disconfirming evidence), and it all starts to look very weak.
Until I see much, much stronger evidence, I'm not ready to leave the IBS sufferers - or anyone - to the mercy of the psychosomatic theorists. We have seen here the harm that such attributions can do if they are incorrect.
I appreciate you answered off the top of your head,
@EllenGB. which is never easy. So there may be other better cases/evidence out there. But as it stands, I'm yet to see a lot of reasons to judge
@A.B.'s original comment as unfair; it looks pretty fair to me.