Comorbid Mental and Somatic Disorders: The Two Sides of the Coin

Ljiljana Trtica Majnaric^1,2*, Sanja Bekic¹ & Igor Filipcic³

¹Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and the History of Medicine, University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
²Faculty of Dental Medicine and Health, Department of Public Health, University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
³Faculty of Dental Medicine and Health, Department of Psychiatry, University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia

Dr. Ljiljana Trtica Majnaric, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Family Medicine & the History of Medicine & Faculty of Dental Medicine & Health, Department of Public Health, University of Osijek, Croatia.

Keywords: Mental Disorders; Somatic Disorders; Comorbidity; Age-Related Differences

Abstract

The dominant current approaches in organisation of healthcare services manage somatic and mental diseases separately from each other. The growing body of evidence suggests that there is a close relationship between these two major groups of diseases at the genetic, pathophysiology and sociopsychological levels, which implies the need for more integrative approaches in screening, prevention and medical care of chronic diseases. On the other hand, recent studies indicate significant differences in clinical expression of mental diseases between younger and older patients. In this short review, we discuss these discrepancies and their impact on healthcare services organisation.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).