Body symptoms and mental health

Back pain, headaches, tiredness, dizziness, an upset stomach or a pounding heart are part of life for most people. In one national survey, about 9 in 10 adults reported at least one physical symptom in the past week.¹ Most come and go. Some last for months and start to shape your days.

These symptoms are real. They can come from a medical illness, from stress, anxiety or depression, or from both at once. Doctors check for medical causes first. When tests come back normal, that does not mean the symptoms are imaginary, and it does not mean nothing can be done. This page gives you the big picture and points you to our detailed pages.

What are body symptoms?

Doctors often call them somatic symptoms, from the Greek word for body. The most common ones include:^1,8

• Pain: back pain, joint or limb pain, headaches, stomach pain, chest pain
• Tiredness or low energy
• Dizziness or feeling faint
• A pounding or racing heart, or shortness of breath
• Nausea, gas, indigestion, constipation or diarrhea
• Trouble sleeping

Older phrases such as "medically unexplained symptoms" or "psychosomatic" are still used, but they can sound like doctors doubt the person. Many experts now use terms like persistent physical symptoms or functional symptoms. They describe symptoms that are real and troubling, whatever the cause.⁹

How common are they?

Very common. In a survey of 1,000 adults in New Zealand, the average person had 5 symptoms in the past week. Only about 1 in 10 had none.¹ The most common were back pain (38%), tiredness (36%), headache (35%) and joint pain (34%). Women reported more symptoms than men.¹

Body symptoms are the leading reason people visit a doctor's office. At least a third of them have no clear medical explanation. These unexplained symptoms last a long time or keep coming back in about 1 in 4 or 5 people.² Functional symptoms, which come from changes in how the body works rather than damage to it, show up in about a third of visits to family doctors and specialists.⁹

How the mind and body work together

Your brain and body are one system. When you are stressed or afraid, your nervous system speeds up your heart, tightens your muscles, changes your breathing and alters how your gut works. When this goes on for weeks, it can lead to headaches, back pain, breathing trouble and stomach problems.³ Poor sleep and worry can also turn up the "volume" on pain.

None of this means the symptoms are made up. They are produced by real changes in the body. Read more in How stress, anxiety and depression cause real body symptoms and What stress does to the body.

It also works the other way. People with long-term illnesses or many body symptoms are more likely to also have depression or anxiety.² When both are present, each can make the other harder to bear. See Depression with heart disease, stroke, diabetes and pain.

What MindCheck looks at

Our free WhySigh MindCheck measures body symptoms with a widely used questionnaire called the PHQ-15 (Patient Health Questionnaire-15). Doctors use it to screen for and track body symptoms.⁸ It asks how much you have been bothered by common symptoms over the past four weeks. These include stomach pain, back pain, headaches, chest pain, dizziness, fainting, a racing heart, shortness of breath, bowel changes, tiredness and trouble sleeping. Each one is rated "not bothered," "bothered a little" or "bothered a lot."⁸ MindCheck asks 13 of these questions directly. It takes the other two, tiredness and trouble sleeping, from your answers to its depression questions. The question about menstrual cramps is asked of women only.

On the full questionnaire, scores of 5, 10 and 15 are often used to mark mild, moderate and severe symptom levels.⁸ In a national survey of more than 5,000 adults in Germany, about 1 in 11 scored 10 or higher. Scores rose with age, and women scored a little higher than men.¹⁰

Keep in mind what the score can and cannot tell you:

• It shows how much symptoms bother you, not what causes them.
• A high score can come from arthritis, heart disease or another illness, as well as from stress or mood. See Body symptoms in later life.
• It is not a diagnosis. It is a reason to talk with a doctor and to look at the whole picture.

Conditions on the body symptoms spectrum

Having body symptoms, even lasting ones, does not by itself mean you have a mental health condition. A few patterns have their own names:

• Somatic symptom disorder. Symptoms come with so much worry, attention and time spent on them that daily life suffers. It is about distress, not about whether a medical cause exists.¹¹ See Somatic symptom disorder.
• Health anxiety. The main problem is fear of having a serious illness, often with few symptoms. See Health anxiety.
• Functional disorders. Recognized patterns of symptoms such as irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, functional neurological disorder and chronic primary pain.⁹ See Functional disorders.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a separate, serious medical illness, not a psychological one. We explain why on the functional disorders page.

What helps

The badges show how strong the research is (see how we rate evidence).

All body symptoms pages

• How stress, anxiety and depression cause real body symptoms
• Getting checked: seeing a doctor about body symptoms
• Somatic symptom disorder
• Functional disorders: IBS, fibromyalgia, FND and chronic pain
• Self-help for body symptoms
• Treatment for persistent body symptoms
• Body symptoms in later life

Related: Health anxiety, Panic attacks, Depression, Sleep problems, Chronic pain and mood, the stress and your body quiz and the body scan.

Explore body symptoms

When to get help

See a doctor if a symptom is new, getting worse, or lasting more than a few weeks, or if it keeps you from your usual life. Also see a doctor if body symptoms come with low mood, worry or poor sleep. Our page on getting checked explains how to prepare and what normal tests mean.

Education only. This page is general information written from the sources listed. It is not medical, legal or financial advice and does not replace a doctor, therapist or lawyer who knows your situation. How we write and check pages.