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somatic symptom disorder

in DSM–5, a disorder characterized by one or more significant bodily symptoms (e.g., pain) that cause distress or impair daily function and by excessive, maladaptive thoughts (preoccupation) or excessive worry about the symptoms, with or without the presence of a medical condition to account for the symptoms. One of two replacement diagnoses for hypochondriasis, somatic symptom disorder is determined based only on this set of criteria and does not also apply to high health anxiety that occurs in the absence of significant somatic symptoms, as in illness anxiety disorder. Somatic symptom disorder also replaces such DSM–IV–TR diagnoses as somatization disorder, requiring only one or two symptoms for diagnosis rather than the much higher symptom count (4 pain, 2 gastrointestinal, 1 sexual, 1 psychoneurological) of the older criteria.

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Psychology term of the day

May 9th 2024

psychonomic

psychonomic

adj. denoting an approach to psychology that emphasizes quantitative measurement, experimental control, and operational definitions, especially in the area of experimental, laboratory psychology. The word was coined to provide a name for the Psychonomic Society, which was created in 1959 by a number of experimental psychologists who were opposed to what they regarded as a swing in the American Psychological Association toward an emphasis on the mental health concerns of psychology. See experimental psychology.