PATTERNS OF SOMATIZATION - A CROSS-CULTURAL-STUDY

One hundred and ninety-five subjects aged between 16 and 65 years were studied in a primary care setting using two standardised measures of psychiatric morbidity and somatic complaints respectively. The sample comprised subjects of Asian descent resident in Britain and indigenous Caucasian British subjects. A logistic regression showed that the Asi an subjects could not be accurately categorised based upon their respo nses to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) whereas the C aucasian subjects could. The responses of both. ethnic groups to the B radford Somatic Inventory (BSI) could be used to classify them accurat ely. This suggested that their responses to the BSI may have been dete rmined either by language or culture. The paper discusses how these re sults could have arisen.