Symptoms of cardiovascular diseases in the course of mental disorders

Background: Psychosomatic disorders are extremely common in patients in non-psychiatric departments. It is widely known that in these cases comorbid psychiatric disorders are highly prevalent and that the importance of psychosocial factors is relevant. However, it is still a challenge for both internal medicine and mental health professionals to diagnose and treat them effectively. The need of evidence-based treatment guidelines for clinicians is obvious. As far as it is concerned, DSM-5 has redefined the criteria of somatoform disorders, underlying the importance of incorrect thoughts about symptoms whether organic ethiology. Methods/Design: The aim was to provide an insight into the barriers of diagnosing psychosomatic disorders in cardiology referring to possible psychiatric comorbidity. Over 150 actual abstracts and full text manuscripts were checked. The literature published in English and Polish, mostly in PubMED/MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews of past 10 years was studied and compared to the literature of psychoanalytic theory. Disscussion: It is worth to remember, that for high proportion of patients with mental disorders somatic syndrome is the only symptom they report to physicians. Emotion regulation theory, alexithymia theory and desomatization and resomatization theory find it as the effect of unsolved problems with emotions. Moreover, functional neuroimaging studies seem to reveal coherent findings. Based on it, the neurophysilogical model of emotion regulation and the mechanism of cognitive-emotional executive control were described. Accordingly, literature shows that in heart disease patients the incorporation of psychological interventions in healing process significantly reduces mortality and relapse.