Multimodal psychotherapy in the management of somatization disorder

Somatization is the presentation of physical symptoms without an objective and identifiable cause, and the condition is among the most common and challenging problems in primary medical care. Several modal of psychotherapy modal is being practiced but effective treatment in rarely delivered.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and durability of multimodal psychotherapy in the management of somatization disorder.

This is a hospital-based study using the pre-post design with control group. Thirty outpatient department patients with somatization disorder were selected and divided into two groups, i.e., intervention group and control group using the purposive sampling method. Intervention group was given 12 sessions of management package, i.e., symptoms monitoring form, scheduling of daily activity, sleep hygiene, diaphragmatic breathing, psycho-social intervention, psychodynamic individual psychotherapy, and cognitive restructuring (approximately 3-4 months). Efficacy and durability were measured by the Bradford somatic inventory, general health questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28), defense mechanism inventory (DMI), and Sack's sentence completion test (SSCT).

The results reveal that there are significant differences found among intervention group in comparisons to the control group in the context of somatic complaints (BSI), general health functioning (GHQ-28), life conflict (SSCT), and in defense mechanism (DMI). Significant improvement also found between postintervention and follow-up of the intervention group on different study variables.

The present study findings indicate that multimodal psychotherapy program is effective in the Indian context in the management of somatization disorder.