Samiul Bashar Samin
The belief that physical illness can be psychosomatic, or caused by the mind, has long been seductive, capturing the imagination of doctors and writers alike.The assertion that physical illness is due to psychosocial stress is absurdly common, in both the popular media and the medical literature. The abundance of conditions supposedly caused by psychosocial stress is enough to raise alarm bells in a critical, scientific enquirer.
One logical flaw in such reasoning is that stressful life events and circumstances are themselves ubiquitous. The British psychiatrist Eliot Slater understood this in 1965, when he said that: ‘Unfortunately we have to recognize that trouble, discord, anxiety and frustration are so prevalent at all stages of life, that their mere occurrence near to the time of onset of an illness does not mean very much.’ Even positive life events or conditions can be stressful.
What’s more, memories of stressful events can be unreliable, especially if the recounting of such self-reported events is influenced by the expectations of researchers. Individuals or families who have suffered from an illness with uncertain or mysterious causes may be more likely to imagine a causal link with adverse life events.
In addition to psychogenic dismissal – where physical ill health is left un-investigated and untreated – psychogenic explanations effectively pathologise a patient’s personality and encourage patients to self-blame. Despite the seductiveness of psychogenic explanations for physical ill-health, the oft-expressed idea that ‘our thoughts make us sick’ is not supported by the available evidence. It is riddled with fallacies in reasoning, and causes harm to those to whom it is applied.