[The difference between ill persons and patients].

Abstract

Knowledge in psychosomatic medicine is based on clinical experience or on the study of "psychosomatically ill persons", who undergo treatment because of their illness, that is to say on patients. Quite commonly we draw conclusions about an entire population of persons with a specific disorder, or we consider a finding as the correlate of the disorder itself. Several considerations prove this type of generalization wrong, and may lead to false conclusions: for example epidemiological data obtained from rates of medical utilization, the comparison of ill persons and patients suffering from functional gastrointestinal disorders, or a survey of literature about the significance of illness behavior and psychological factors in the demand for medical care. The consequences effect not only the interpretation of empirical results, and the selection of sample survey, but also send a call for fieldstudies on the relevant disorders.