Psychosomatic Aspects of Endometriosis

Johannes Bitzer
In: Journal of Endometriosis · 2011 · vol. 3(3) , pp. 166–170 · doi:10.5301/je.2011.8906 · W944239820
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 9 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

Endometriosis presents patients with challenges like delayed diagnosis, chronic pain, and infertility, necessitating integrated psychosomatic care to address psychological needs and improve patient outcomes.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

From a patient's perspective and experience endometriosis is characterized by six major challenges and stressors: 1) often the diagnosis is delayed; 2) the cause of the disease is unknown; 3) it is a chronic recurrent disease; 4) it affects young women; 5) it is accompanied by chronic pain and dyspareunia; 6) it may lead to infertility. These features create psychological needs for patients which should be responded to by an integrated basic psychosomatic care. This includes respect and empathy, patient centered communication, adequate response to negative emotions, establishment of a helpful and lasting therapeutic relationship, psychoeducation, empowerment and shared decision making. Apart from this basic psychosomatic care which can be provided by each treating physician or nurse, some conditions need more specialized psychosomatic care in the context of a multidisciplinary team: Chronic pain services, Infertility treatment teams, Sexual counselling and therapy and treatment of psychiatric comorbities or sequelae of the disease like depression, anxiety disorder etc. Psychosomatic care should thus be integrated into the biomedical diagnosis and therapy of endometriosis.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisdyspareuniainfertility

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (22)

Cited by (9)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK