S05-03 - Social Evolution of Somatization [E106]

Somatization concept should be considered in biopsychosocial integrity. This presentation reviews the social aspects of somatization. The description of somatization evolved in time in order to include the social aspects. The differences of somatization between societies, somatization concept in western and Eastern medical thought, modernist theory on the evolution of somatization, research which confirm and which do not confirm the modernist theory were reviewed. The pos-modern approach which constitutes a new paradigm in cultural psychiatry, prefers to study the mental disorders through the culture, instead of comparing them cross-culturally. In this context, first the culture-bound somatization diagnosis of non-Western cultures, then the fashionable diagnosis of Western culture in which the somatization is hiding were reviewed.