Frequency of common psychosomatic symptoms and its influence on self-perceived health in a Hungarian student population

The objectives of this investigation were to describe the frequencyof some common psychosomatic symptoms and variations in self-assessedhealth status and to determine whether there are gender differencesin these symptoms and the perception of one's own health ina student population. Finally, we examined the relationshipbetween the frequency of symptoms and self-perceived health.The design is a cross-sectional survey, as the first phase ofa longitudinal cohort study. The participants in the study (n=691)were students of the medical faculty of Albert Szent-GyörgyiMedical University, Szeged, Hungary, aged 18–31 yearsconsisting of 39.4% men and 60.6% women. The response rate was70.5%. Data were collected by using a self-administered questionnairecontaining various items designed to measure self-perceivedhealth and health-related variables including some common psychosomaticsymptoms. The following symptoms appeared the most frequentamong students in both sexes: sleeping problems, chronic fatigueand backache. Using the appropriate t-test, mean scores of thesymptom indices by sex showed an excess of occurrence amongfemale students in particular of 2 symptoms: tension headacheand chronic fatigue. Most students evaluated their own healthas good. Students who scored lower on self-perceived healthhad experienced more symptoms. Based on these results we canconclude that the frequency of the symptoms under study hasan influence on self-perceived health. A follow-up of the surveypopulation seems to be necessary.