Mindfulness Therapies for Medically Unexplained Somatic Symptoms: A Systematic Review

Mindfulness is a new therapeutic approach. Over the last years, it is found to be effective in treating many psychological and somatic symptoms. Somatic symptom disorder was characterized by chronic, recurring and clinically significant somatic symptoms. It is known that these symptoms cannot be fully explained by general medical condition and might significantly interfere with a person's general functioning. It is understood that some somatic symptoms which can not medically explained but thought having a psycho-somatic based are also provided from psychological treatments like somatic symptom disorder. Surprisingly, mindfulness-based intervention studies of somatic symptom disorder are especially focused on these medical conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia. To systematically review these studies, PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES databases were assessed