Personality dysfunction among somatizing patients

To examine the nature and extent of personality dysfunction related to soma tization, the authors administered the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Pers onality and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory to a series of somatizing and non somatizing patients in a general medicine clinic. A greater percentage of s omatizers met criteria for one or more DSM-IV personality disorders, especi ally obsessive-compulsive disorder, than did control patients. Somatizers a lso differed from control patients with respect to self-defeating, depressi ve, and negativistic personality traits and scored higher on the dimension of neuroticism and lower on the dimension of agreeableness. In addition, in itial and facultative somatizers showed more personality pathology than tru e somatizers. These findings suggest that certain personality disorders and traits contribute to somatization by way of increased symptom reporting an d care-seeking behavior.