One of the most frequent requests I receive is for a way to screen for the presence of hidden stresses. Most of those who inquire are interested in administering a questionnaire to patients/clients as they wait to see their clinician. No suitably brief, scientifically validated questionnaire exists that covers the full range of hidden stresses but I have created a reasonable question set and added it to the Book Overview section of this site.
I had never heard of Mississippi writer Barry Hannah until he died two months ago at age 67. The obituaries quoted many well-known authors who revered him and prominently mentioned his award-winning short story collection Airships (1978). When my writer friend Peter also praised it I put in an order.
Bethesda, Maryland. April 1. The Center for Irreproducible Results at the National Institution of Health today announced a stunning breakthrough that is certain to benefit hundreds of millions of patients. Dr. Freddie P. Ignobel reports that she has found a blood test that can reliably confirm when physical symptoms are caused by life stresses and not by a disease of an organ or a metabolic problem.
I don’t recall ever encountering a conference that included internists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, a gastroenterologist (myself) and a public relations expert all addressing the same clinical issue. Yet this is what came together at UCLA this weekend to address physical symptoms caused by psychosocial stress. Nearly 200 attended and it was remarkable to see the consensus that grew out of such disparate clinical experience.
For years I would teach medical residents about stress illness by telling the true story of a 16 year old girl who came to clinic with intermittent blurred vision (the full story is in my book). I would ask them to pretend she was in the room and to try to diagnose the cause. They would ask questions about her symptoms and “order” tests and I would give them the results. Very few even got close to the answer though a few, to their credit, were able to look beyond physiology alone and figure out that her vision blurred when she was crying. The crying was from severe depression brought on by regular physical abuse by her father.
A woman approached me before a lecture and said “I heard your talk a few years ago, went home afterward and told my husband I wanted a divorce.” I was so surprised I couldn’t think of an intelligent response before she went on to say “…and as soon as it was final all the pain in my jaw went away and hasn’t come back so I wanted to thank you.”
