The hierarchy is clear: if sick leave is issued after the weekend, the broken bone counts more than the nervous breakdown. The fall during the daring climbing tour is a hero’s story, while the panic attack after mental overload is kept secret. Mental suffering is still seen as a personal weakness, as an individual failure, and persistent education and the removal of taboos have done little to change that. Although those who seek help from a therapist are no longer labeled as “crazy”, those affected are still under general suspicion of having luxury problems or just imagining their symptoms.
The findings are clear. At least 40 percent of all patients who consult established doctors complain about functional problems, as psychosomatic illnesses are also called. Cardiac arrhythmias, dizziness, pain, weakness, gastrointestinal complaints are among them. The symptoms are real, they can be severe – but no organic cause can be found. It is a great error and detrimental to patients to dismiss such ailments as “imaginary” or not serious. Nevertheless, backache, tachycardia or digestive disorders are only considered “real” illnesses for many patients – and many doctors – when they are confirmed by X-rays, laboratory values or other measuring methods. Even in the dispute over the background of conditions such as Long Covid, chronic exhaustion or chronic Lyme disease, in which the patient’s self-perception plays an important role, there is a bitter struggle not to classify the symptoms as “only psychological”.
What a misunderstanding! The psyche plays a role in all diseases, be it for the origin, the severity of the symptoms or the chronification of a disease. Changed laboratory values or conspicuous X-rays do not contradict this, on the contrary. A holistic medicine in the literal sense always refers to both, body and soul, and therefore also includes psychotherapeutic procedures. In addition, it is part of being human to be more susceptible to illnesses and more sensitive to pain in stressful situations, this is completely normal. The psyche must be taken more seriously – in medicine anyway, but also in the self-image of patients and those who don’t want to become one.