[Functional somatic symptoms - short-term psychodynamic therapy can be helpful]

Patients with functional somatic symptoms or medically unexplained symptoms are very common in the healthcare system but they do not always receive adequate care or treatment. These patients struggle with a low quality of life and constitute a high cost to the healthcare system. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a relatively common treatment intervention and helps many patients, but not all. Short-term psychodynamic therapy has recently been evaluated in several meta-analysis and have been found to be clearly effective. A major focus of short-term psychodynamic therapy is on emotional processing of stressful or traumatic life events. At present, these psychodynamic short-term therapies are not offered in regular care, despite the solid research support that exists. Short-term psychodynamic therapy should be considered a complement to the range of treatments that already exist for patients with functional somatic symptoms.