When we feel pain and discomfort in certain parts of the body, our first reaction is “there is something wrong with my body”. In fact, some pain is not caused by physical reasons, but caused by psychological diseases. Many patients always feel that the body hurts here and there, and they can’t find out any organic diseases in the body when they arrive at the hospital.
In fact, depression and anxiety can also lead to physical pain. Studies have shown that as many as 65% of depressive patients are accompanied by physical pain symptoms, and as high as 43.4% of patients with severe depression are accompanied by more than one chronic physical pain symptoms. Chronic physical pain is strongly associated with depression, and its severity is positively correlated with depression severity.
In patients with depression, headache is the most common, with a prevalence rate of 64%, which is higher than 48% of healthy people. Several common pain symptoms, such as muscle pain, stomach pain, chest pain, etc., have a prevalence rate of 53%, 51%, and 46% in patients with depression, which is much higher than 27%, 20%, and 14% in healthy people .
Most of the common pain and discomfort in patients with depression are not very intuitive, such as the tightness of the head related to muscle tension, stiffness, heaviness, and soreness of the nape and back; The skin feels like being poured by cold water or is hot, the body has a rising or falling feeling, foreign body sensation in the digestive tract, difficulty swallowing, etc. There are even “discomforts” that are completely indescribable, so that people who don’t know will think they are hypocritical and moaning without illness.
In addition to symptoms such as sadness, loss of interest, guilt, and self-blame, patients with depression, if accompanied by pain symptoms, will also seriously affect the prognosis, increase the disease burden of patients, and reduce the quality of life. If you find that you or your family have physical pain, but no specific disease can be found, it is recommended to see a doctor in a related department such as a psychology department in time, and seek professional help in order to effectively treat depression and improve the patient’s quality of life.
