Psychiatric study of a consecutive series of 19 patients with regional ileitis.

This paper reports a study of psychiatric factors in regional ileitis.The study parallels a similar survey (Feldman et al., 1967) in which we reported a series of 34 unselected cases of ulcerative colitis.In the latter inquiry a disease regarded by many psychiatrists as an unimpeachably psychosomatic illness was found to have probably no essential emotional causation.Regional ileitis, a disease of obscure origin, has not attained the same almost classical reputation of ulcerative colitis as a psychosomatic illness.Nevertheless, since 1935 a number of authors have expressed the opinion that regional ileitis is a psychosomatic disease.A leading American textbook (Beeson and McDermott, 1967) stated: " It is thought that the repeated impact of emotional stress may give rise to dysfunction of the small intestine, with subsequent structural changes.This is supported by the clinical observation that recurrent symptoms are, at times, chronologically related to disturbing psychologic events.