A 28-year old female presented with pain and left TMJ instability, headache, buzzing in her ears, pain extending from her neck, shoulders and chest to her back and waist and general fatigue.
She underwent orthogneatic surgery at another hospital five years previously. Subsequently she suffered from the above symptoms for four years. She had visited many hospitals but had obtained no relief.
Since she was severely depressed, we administered 40mg amitriptyline, 2.0mg lorazepam, 200mg sulpiride per day.
On the other hand, she was convinced that the cause of the symptoms was her occlusion, so psychotherapy was required to change her mistaken conviction.
The technique we used was “description of impressions”, and to use it more effectively we never treated her occlusion. We permitted her to leave hospital and stay out according to improvement of her symptoms.
We confirmed the recovery process without treating the occlusion based on her “description of impressions” on a daily basis. Finally her thinking changed and she said “when I was sick, I couldn't believe that the occlusion had nothing to do with my symptoms”.
It can be concluded that these somatic symptoms derive from depression because antidepressants were effective. However, it is impossible to change mistaken convictions by medicine. We consider that it results from the higher brain, because the “description of impressions” was effective in improving it.
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