Medicine: Preventive Psychiatry

When she was eleven years old, the patient was taken to the hospital with a stomachache. There, a young intern recommended a psychiatric examination and sent her home with some aspirin. The aspirin seemed to work wonders. Neither the girl nor her parents saw much need for psychiatry.

Later the persistent stomachache returned, and the girl started a 35 -year tour through American hospitals. She had nine abdominal operations and some 5,600 hours of free medical attention, but the doctors never found any physical basis for her aches & pains. She became a helpless...

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