Somatothymia in chronic pain patients.

Somatothymia is the use of somatic language to communicate affective distress. A total of 152 chronic pain patients completed a systems review checklist and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Associated features of somatic symptoms and the meaningfulness of somatic symptoms as a communication, common physical areas of somatic focus, patterns of affective distress in high and low somatothymics, and the utility of select variables classifying high and low somatothymics were evaluated. The results indicate that a systems review checklist can be used as a quick, useful, and initial screen for somatothymia and that somatic symptoms can in fact communicate affective distress.