Psychiatric diagnoses, self-reports of symptoms, and illness behavior of
20 fibromyalgia patients and 23 rheumatoid arthritis patients were
compared. The fibromyalgia patients were not significantly more likely than
the arthritis patients to report depressive symptoms or to receive a
lifetime psychiatric diagnosis of major depression. These results do not
support the contention that fibromyalgia is a form of somatized depression.
Fibromyalgia patients, however, reported significantly more somatic
symptoms of obscure origin and exhibited a pattern of reporting more
somatic symptoms, multiple surgical procedures, and help seeking that may
reflect a process of somatization rather than a discrete psychiatric
disorder.
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