Somatoforme Beschwerden bei Jugendlichen in Deutschland

As part of a larger survey involving a representative sample of 2.050 Germans aged 14 to 92 years, the prevalence of somatoform complaints among young people (N=189,14 to 25 years old) was analyzed separately.The instrument used was the SOMS 2 (Screening for somatoform disorders), a German questionnaire developed by Rief et al. (1997). It could be shown that somatoform complaints are less prevalent among young people, but still occur frequently.Most commonly mentioned were headaches, facial pain, backache, pains in the extremities, nausea and stomachache.Girls frequently mentioned menstrual pains.The socio-demographic variables “age” (14–19 vs. 20–25 yrs.),“gender” and “geographical region” (East vs.West Germany) proved to be unrelated to the prevalence of somatoform complaints in this age-group.By contrast to these findings on subjective complaints amongst young people, only one of the sample could be diagnosed as having a somatoform disorder in the sense defined by the DSM-IV or the ICD-10. This low rate of prevalence is the result of the extremely restrictive criteria defined for somatoform disorders by these diagnostic systems, which obscure the real frequency in the general population of somatoform syndromes requiring treatment.