TOWARDS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ILL PEOPLE AND PATIENTS

Knowledge in psychosomatic medicine is based on clinical experience or on the study of ''psychosomatically ill persons'', who undergo treatm ent because of their illness, that is to say on patients. Quite common ly we draw conclusions about an entire population of persons with a sp ecific disorder, or we consider a finding as the correlate of the diso rder itself. Several considerations prove this type of generalization wrong, and may lead to false conclusions: for example epidemiological data obtained from rates of medical utilization, the comparison of ill persons and patients suffering from functional gastrointestinal disor ders, or a survey of literature about the significance of illness beha vior and psychological factors in the demand for medical care. The con sequences effect not only the interpretation of empirical results, and the selection of sample survey, but also send a call for fieldstudies on the relevant disorders.