Senestopathy is a mental disorder in which a person feels constant discomfort in the body. The patient may complain of a creepy sensation that occurs both on the skin and under the skin, talk about pain in the joints or muscles. In some cases, patients with senestopathy insist that their internal organs change in size or rot.
Rarely, senestopathy is considered a separate mental illness. Typically, this condition is accompanied by a number of disorders, such as schizophrenia or depressive psychosis. A distinctive feature of patients with senestopathy is that they are unable to describe normally what is happening to them, what they feel. Questions about pain or other symptoms of this disorder are perplexing for sick people.
Features of pathology
With senestopathy, a person can constantly feel soreness in the body or discomfort, complain of general malaise, or talk about problems with a particular part of the body, with a particular organ. As a rule, there are no physical disorders in the sick.
In severe cases, senestopathy is accompanied by hallucinations. They can be tactile, visual. Moreover, in all cases of this mental disorder, a delusional state is usually present, which is often the reason why the patient is not able to describe in normal words what he feels and what is happening to him.
If senestopathy develops in a person who does not have any serious mental pathology, then the condition begins to cause panic and anxiety. The patient simply does not understand what is happening to him, which doctor to contact and how to alleviate his condition.
It is worth noting that if this disorder is not treated, then it gradually begins to progress. Imaginary pain becomes stronger, discomfort spreads to the whole body and internal organs, affects bones, muscles, ligaments. Against the background of this, anxiety disorders, neuroses of various types and other similar disorders often develop. When senestopathy becomes chronic and / or severe, it is no longer possible to cope with the pathology on your own.
Symptoms for senestopathy
- Development of irrational fear, occurrence of phobias. Usually, a person with this disorder has a pathological fear of insanity.
- Delusional ideas. For example, a sick person can be sure that his internal organs either increase, causing discomfort, or sharply decrease, which causes pain.
- Hallucinations. A person can see how goosebumps appear not on the skin, but under the skin, can feel how food is being digested, which, of course, is carried out by the digestive tract organs incorrectly, and so on.
- Change in thermal sensations. Patients with senestopathy react sharply to both cold snap and warming. Additionally, fever, chills may occur for no apparent reason. Or patients complain that certain parts of their body are icy / too hot.
- Increased anxiety, anxiety, depressive thoughts.
- In rare cases, symptoms of the disorder include suicidal thoughts and self-harm (self-harm). However, usually such signs are noted with a severe course of the disease.
- Changes in the daily routine. Insomnia may appear due to constant malaise.
- Chronic breakdown, passivity, lethargy and obsession with their condition.
- Trembling in the body, vibration of bones and organs.
- Nervous breakdowns, increased tearfulness, suspiciousness are possible, sometimes hypochondria develops as a symptom of senestopathy.
What causes the violation
Experts identify five main reasons due to which this mental pathology can develop:
- sluggish / lingering / background depression or other forms of a depressive state;
- pathologies of the brain, including tumors, traumatic brain injuries, infections;
- severe intoxication of the body; most often, senestopathy develops when poisoning with drugs, drugs, including antidepressants and tranquilizers, alcohol;
- schizophrenia often becomes the reason why senestopathy occurs, although, as mentioned, in this variant, as in depression, the disorder acts rather as a symptom of the underlying disease;
- hypochondria; in one case, senestopathy, the cause of which could not be established quickly, can provoke the onset of hypochondria, in another case it is excessive concern for one's health, suspicion, constant anxiety due to one's well-being that become the basis for the formation of a pathological condition.
