Psychosomatics

Teaching of the connections between emotional processes and a number of diseases where organic findings alone are not sufficient to explain a disease. In the foreground of classical psychosomatics are diseases such as bronchial asthma, duodenal ulcer, ulcerative colitis and high blood pressure. More recently, the term psychosomatic medicine has come to include all diseases in which a connection between the experience and behaviour of a person and a disease can be recognised or for which psychological methods represent a prevention of the disease, e.g. atopic eczema, chronic back or headaches, diseases from the group of autoimmune diseases. It should be remembered that psychological consequences due to a medical disease factor also belong to psychosomatics.