Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:58:11.491Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Crohn's Disease: A Psychosomatic Illness?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

B. F. Sheffield  and
M. W. P. Carney
B. F. Sheffield
Affiliation:
From the Departments of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Victoria Hospital, Blackpool
M. W. P. Carney
Affiliation:
From the Departments of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, Victoria Hospital, Blackpool
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

We investigated the psychological status of Crohn's disease patients because 10 such patients had been referred to our psychiatric out-patient department over a period of six years, whereas if there were no association between the disease and psychiatric morbidity, the expected referral rate would be one case in 20 to 100 years. We found an association between episodes of psychiatric and physical symptoms in the case histories. We administered the Eysenck Personality Inventory and the Manifest Anxiety Scale to 28 out-patients with Crohn's disease (8 psychiatrically and 20 non-psychiatrically referred), 17 with chronic non-psychosomatic medical diseases, 43 with psychosomatic diseases and 100 with neurosis. Crohn's disease patients were significantly more anxious, neurotic and introverted than both the test norms and the non-psychosomatic medical out-patients and did not differ appreciably from the psychosomatic patients in these respects.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 128 , Issue 5 , May 1976 , pp. 446 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1976 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

British Medical Journal (1970) ii, 65–6.Google Scholar
Carney, M. W. P. (1967) Serum folate values in 423 psychiatric patients. British Medical Journal, iv, 512–16.Google Scholar
Crocket, R. W. (1952) Psychiatric findings in Crohn's disease. Lancet, i, 946.Google Scholar
Crohn, B. B. & Yarnis, N. (1958) Regional Ileitis, p 28. New York: Grune and Stratum.Google Scholar
Evans, J. G. & Acheson, E. G. (1965) An epidemiological study of ulcerative colitis and regional ileitis in the Oxford area. Gut, 6, 311.Google Scholar
Eysenck, H.J. & Eysenck, S. P. G. (1964) Manual of the Eysenck Personality Inventory, London University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, F., Carton, D., Soll, S. & Bacharach, W. (1967) Psychiatric study of a consecutive series of 19 patients with Crohn's disease. British Medical Journal, iv, 711–14.Google Scholar
Ford, C. V., Glober, G. A. & Castelnuovo-Tedesco, P. (1969) A psychiatric study of patients with regional enteritis. Journal of American Medical Association, 208, 311–15.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. (1970) Psychiatric study of patients with diseases of the small intestine. Gut, 11, 459–65.Google Scholar
Grace, W. (1953) Life, stress and regional ileitis. Gastroenterology, 23, 542–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossberg, J. M. & Wilson, H. K. (1965) A correlational comparison of the Wolpe-Lang fear survey schedule and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 3(2), 125–8.Google Scholar
Henderson, & Gillespie, (1962) Textbook of Psychiatry, p 189. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lancet (1972) ii, 942.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. (1954) Aspects of psychiatric medicine. Recenti progressi in Medicina, 16, 434.Google Scholar
Mesereau, B. S. (1963) Regional ileitis in depressed patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 119, 1099–100.Google Scholar
Norlen, B. J., Krause, U. & Bergman, L. (1970) An epidemiological study of Crohn's disease. Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, 5, 385.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paulley, J. W. (1971) Crohn's disease. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 19, 111–17.Google Scholar
Philip, A. E. & Gay, B. L. (1972) Psychiatric symptoms and personality traits in patients suffering from gastro-intestinal illness. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 16, 47–51.Google Scholar
Sainsbury, P. (1960) Psychosomatic disorders and neurosis in outpatients attending a general hospital. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 4, 261.Google Scholar
Stewart, W. A. (1949) Psychosomatic aspects of regional ileitis. New York State Journal of Medicine, 49, 2820–4.Google ScholarPubMed
Symposium on Crohn's Disease (1971) Proceedings of Royal Society of Medicine, 64, 157–74.Google Scholar
Taylor, J. A. (1953) A personality state of manifest anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 48, 285–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.