It is convenient that “medically unexplained symptoms” has become the latest label to be applied to allegedly hysterical symptoms since the term itself—and the way medicine uses it—highlight the problems with the whole concept. Studies have estimated that up to a third of patients in primary care, and up to two-thirds of those in specialty clinics, have “medically unexplained symptoms.” Approximately 70 percent of them are women. But, of course, symptoms are not explained or unexplained per se; symptoms are explained by individual doctors when they make a diagnosis. Some patients with
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