Somatic Fixation - Avoiding Complex Reality - Health Care's version of “Task Saturation”

     “Somatic fixation is a process whereby a physician or a patient or a family focuses exclusively and inappropriately on the physical or biomedical aspect of a complex problem. Somatic fixation can occur not only in hypochondriasis, somatization disorder, and psychosomatic disease, but in any illness, especially chronic illness, when there is a one-sided emphasis on the biomedical aspects of a multi-faceted problem.”
       McDaniel SH, Campbell T, Seaburn D. Treating somatic fixation:
 A biopsychosocial approach. Can Fam Physician 1991; 37: 451-6.

     This "process has been largely ignored. Furthermore, the idea that somatic fixation might be averted by promoting awareness of it in medical school and during residency training has been given virtually no attention. … a process involving doctors as well as patients and, at times, the health care system to which they belong. We propose means of prevention and attempt to distinguish between somatic fixation and the terms ‘somatization’ or ‘somatoform disorder’, the former a tendency usually learned in the family and the latter a psychiatric diagnosis.”
       Biderman A, Yeheskel A, Herman J. Somatic fixation: the harm of healing. Soc Sci Med 2003; 56(5): 1135-8. 

     Biderman et al's 2003 paper (above) was the LAST one written with "somatic fixation" in the title, according to PubMed.

     Clinical Essentialising: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/03/essentializing.html

     Task Saturation: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/02/prioritization.html

 

Alex Gregory - New Yorker