Young Women’s Somatic Symptoms are More Strongly Predicted by Psychosocial Rather Than Physiological Factors: Longitudinal Findings in a Population-Representative Australian Sample

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Objective. Somatic symptoms – persistent medically unexplained physical complaints – present a challenge for the healthcare system, partly because patients often resist psychological explanations and treatments. To inform practitioner-patient interactions, we used two data waves of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health to compare the prospective predictive strength of a wide variety of physiological and psychosocial predictors – individually, and as ‘physiological’ and ‘psychosocial’ clusters. Methods and Measures. 8,261 women aged 22 to 27 reported on 11 somatic symptoms, eight physiological predictors, and nine psychosocial predictors in 2017 and 2019. We assessed relative contributions of the predictors in linear regressions with and without missing-data imputation. Supplementary analyses additionally accounted for baseline somatic symptoms. Results. In the main analysis (with imputation, and without baseline symptoms), physiological predictors accounted for less variance than psychosocial predictors (11.6% vs. 29.6%), but correlated with psychosocial predictors, since the total variance accounted for was only 33.2%. Moreover, physiological factors (physiological condition and sexual condition) comprised two of the five strongest predictors. Low income and stress were among the five strongest predictors across all analyses. Conclusion. Practitioners could discuss the likely interplay of psychosocial and physiological processes and advise on affordable treatment options for low-income earners.

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