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In a recent issue of the ARCHIVES, Simon and Gureje¹ reported on the stability of the symptoms and diagnosis of somatization disorder (SD). The authors found that the diagnosis of SD was not stable and that progressively, significant discrepancies were found in somatic symptom reporting.

Given that some of their data seemed to be restricted in range, we wondered whether alternative conceptualizations of somatization^{2, 3} would yield higher stability estimates. To explore this issue, we reanalyzed the data reported by the authors in their Table 1 and Table 2, using a Monte Carlo method⁴ for estimating the stability of somatization over time.

Based on the data in their Table 1, we estimated the stability of SD to be between 0.18 and 0.37 using Kendall -b (95% confidence interval). However, for the data in the table "Number of Lifetime Somatization Symptoms Reported at Follow-up Assessment According to Number Reported at Baseline," the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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