Over nine months, Linda spent 51 days in the hospital for her stress-related illness but two mental health professionals (MHPs) failed to find the cause.  Joaquin, age 16,  was ill for three months, told his doctors he suspected his pain was caused by stress and was referred to three mental health counselors who failed to find the cause.  How can this happen when the issues underlying most cases of stress illness are well known to MHPs?

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If you developed episodes of chest pain accompanied by shortness of breath, would you call a psychiatrist about it?  Of course not, but therein lies another side of the mind-body blind spot in our health care system.  In most people who visit a primary care clinician for physical symptoms,  the cause is one or more psychosocial stresses entirely appropriate for mental health professionals to manage.  Of course it is essential for symptoms to be evaluated by a medical professional first.  Ideally though, once medical disease is excluded as a cause of a symptom, patients would be evaluated by a clinician with mental health skills who could then uncover any links to stress.  Unfortunately, several problems prevent this from happening in most cases: (more…)