In this study we examine among those under the age of 18 years having somatoform disorders, the relationship between physical health and mental health costs in comparison to those with other psychiatric disorders.

Based on approximately 10 Million billing records, we compared the average number of visits and average costs per unique individual for “physical diagnoses” (non-psychiatric) and psychiatric diagnoses over the 16 year study period across case and comparison groups. Here, we report the 16 year prevalence of somatoform disorders in the population.

Somatoform disorders ranked 15th in terms of overall cost in the comparison group which was randomly selected from the physician billing data pool. Somatoform disorders ranked 22nd of 25 in terms of frequency of diagnosis. The cumulative frequency of somatoform disorders over the 16 year interval for individuals was 169 within the 26,392 cases and 479 within the 205,281 comparisons, representing approximately 0.8% of the sampled population total population in catchment ∼300,000).

The prevalence of treated Somatoform disorders indicates that they are are relatively rare in the study population. Lieb et al. (2002) found a lifetime prevalence of 12.5% of any somatoform condition in German adolescents. Kebede and Alem (1999) reported a one month point prevalence of 2.5% for Ethiopian youth. Somatoform disorders are most commonly seen in children and adolescents and appeared to be diagnosed much less frequently among Canadian children and adolescents. Differences are likely based on sampling methodology used epidemiological surveys compared to population utilization.