Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders CPS Podcast

[on-hold music] Welcome to Pediatric Podcast for PedsCases.com.

[upbeat music] Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Peds Cases.

I'm Sarah Clements, a second-year medical student at McMaster University.

Today, we will be discussing the Canadian Pediatric Society statement on somatic symptom and related disorders.

This podcast was co-developed with Dr. Christina Grant, an adolescent medicine specialist at McMaster Children's Hospital, working in the Division of Adolescent Medicine.

[upbeat music] Somatic symptom and related disorders, SSRDs, encompass an overarching category of mental disorders impacting children and adolescents.

Patients and families often get multiple diagnostic tests or seek out various medical opinions before receiving a diagnosis of an SSRD.

Given this, there is a high utilization of healthcare services at all levels of care for individuals with SSRDs and delays in starting mental health treatment.

Now let's go over the learning objectives.

By the end of this podcast, you should be able to, one, define somatization and describe the five disorders categorized under SSRDs.

Two, understand the epidemiology and clinical presentation of SSRDs.

Three, identify when tests and further investigations would be appropriate to pursue.

Four, formulate a treatment approach for patients with SSRDs.

And five, develop strategies to apply during clinical encounters.