Mind and Body in Medicine

In the pandemic year of 2020, millions of people worldwide have been fighting the coronavirus by withholding touch.
The result is a global experiment in “touch deprivation,” the full outcome of which likely will not be known for years. But touch is an important ingredient in the human experience, and the lack of touch can affect physical and emotional wellbeing.

But as we practice social distancing to prevent the community spread of COVID-19, platonic physical touch among friends and colleagues is off limits. Hugs, high-fives, friendly pats on the back or anything that breaches the 2 meter rule are now taboo.
When physical contact becomes limited—or, in some cases, eliminated—people can develop a condition called touch starvation or touch deprivation.
While nothing can wholly replace the benefits of positive human touch, virtual alternatives can help alleviate the effects of touch starvation.

The credibility of psychosomatic medicine has recently been called into question through challenges to the scientific integrity of the “PACE trial”, which claimed success for psychiatric treatment in managing myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.  The newest product of research in psychosomatic medicine is “bodily distress syndrome” (BDS), a Danish diagnostic construct developed to replace “somatoform disorders”, “medically unexplained symptoms” and “functional somatic syndromes”.  I set out in this paper to examine the science that supports the construct of BDS, both in design and in implementation.  Following the Introduction, in Part 2 I clarify the details that define BDS, and the problems the construct is designed to resolve.  In Part 3, I explore three problems with the science behind BDS. In Part 4, I consider the World Health Organization’s effort to implement BDS in the International Classification of Diseases, noting that while BDS criteria fail in both WHO studies, the workgroup nonetheless insists that the ICD should recommend them for global use.  I conclude that BDS gives support to recent concern that scientific standards in psychosomatic medicine are inadequate, closing with a brief discussion of ethical problems that arise when global health policy decisions are not grounded in science.