Specificity of psychological profiles of irritable bowel syndrome patients

The aim of the study was to investigate the specificity of psychological profiles in female Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) patients by a comparison with a gastrointestinal patient control group and with a normal population control group. The results showed that the IBS patients scored significantly higher than the normal population sample on three test scales: Anxiety, Phobic and Somatisation. Our results thus support the conclusion of earlier authors that a moderate degree of psychoneurotic disorder exists amongst IBS patients. However, the patient control group also scored significantly higher than the normal control group on two factors (Phobic and Somatisation), and the comparison between the IBS group and the patient control group did not reveal any significant differences. It is suggested that attention to the psychological needs of both IBS and other gastrointestinal disease patients should form an important part of the management strategy, particularly in the former--where a consistently clear benefit for any particular therapy has yet to be shown.