The suffering of the soul in medicine: 'Psychosomatic medicine, depression, anxiety, anger and the skin'

Our understandings of health and illness are constructed by culture, society, history, family and tradition. When most of us get sick we seek out a cure for the symptom. Psychosomatic medicine instead sees the symptom as a sign or indicator of an underlying suffering of the psyche and the soul. This understanding destabilises our current understandings of health and illness, where the suffering of the soul has no place. The discussion begins by exploring understandings of psychosomatic medicine in relation to the biomedical model and the biopsychosocial model of health provision operating in Australia today. As in other areas of integrative medicine, elements of psychosomatic medicine that best fit with a biomedical framework are currently the most popular. However, if we understand symptoms from a psychosomatic perspective in which they are seen as a somatisation of deeper emotional issues, then treatment can be conceptualised differently. This idea is discussed with reference to the stress effects of depression, anxiety, anger and the state of the skin. This article ends with an argument for taking into account the suffering of the soul in medicine.