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Patients with mental disorders have an increased risk for somatic diseases. Especially life style risk factors contribute to this increased risk. In order to identify targets for preventive measures, we aimed to determine the prevalence of an unhealthy lifestyle in a clinical sample and to analyze associations with severity of mental disorders and somatic complaints. We analyzed the medical records of n=1 919 outpatients, who were treated between 2009-2011 in the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy of the University Medical Center Mainz. 62.4% of the patients were physically inactive, 33.2% were smokers and 17.4% were obese. Lifestyle risk factors were associated with increased symptom burden and impairment. Smoking was strongly associated with more previous psychiatric or psychosomatic inpatient treatments. These results indicate an urgent need for targeting health behavior more rigorously in the treatment of patients with common mental disorders., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) was given to 1 439 patients of the outpatient- and consultation/liaison unit of the psychosomatic department of a university hospital. Self-reported emotional, sexual and physical abuse and emotional and physical neglect were related to the mental diagnoses and distress. Patients with childhood trauma (41,4%) reported higher levels of social anxiety, distress and physical complaints than patients without traumatizing childhood experiences. We found relations between emotional abuse and depression and personality disorders, physical abuse and somatoform disorders and sexual abuse and posttraumatic stress disorder. The observed relation between specific dimensions of childhood trauma and psychiatric diagnoses is consistent with reports on other clinical samples., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) are considered to be highly underdiagnosed. Therefore the development of screening instruments is important. From the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS) two items were extracted discriminating best patients with clinical significant DP from patients without DP. These two Items were assembled to a short version of the CDS. This short version (CDS-2) was tested in a sample of 38 patients with clinical significant DP-DR and 49 patients without or only mild DP-DR. Scores were compared against clinical diagnoses based on a structured interview (gold standard). The CDS-2 was able to differentiate patients with clinical significant DP well from other groups (cut-off of CDS-2>or=3, sensitivity=78.9%, specifity=85.7%) and also showed high reliability (Cronbachs alpha=0.92). Therefore the CDS-2 can be considered as a useful tool for screening and identification of DP-DR.

Social fears are common, whereas Social Phobia is diagnosed infrequently. Therefore, we compared the clinical diagnoses (ICD-10) in an outpatient and CL service of a psychosomatic university hospital to patients' self ratings in social fears on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS). Over the course of one year 688 patients could be characterized regarding their clinical diagnoses, LSAS-scores, symptom severity (SCL-90R) and psychosomatic complaints (GBB-24). Patients were assigned to three groups by their levels of social fears (LSAS). Social Phobia was diagnosed rarely by clinicians (5.5%), but generalized social fears (LSAS>60) were commonly reported by patients (14.6%). Patients with social fears reported higher distress and more psychosomatic complaints. They were more often diagnosed with Depression, Agoraphobia or Panic Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Effective manualized psychotherapeutic short-term approaches are available for patients with Social Phobia. Therefore, a better clinical identification of this group of patients is desirable., (Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.New York.)