Relationship Between Perceived Stress and Physical Symptoms with Somatic Symptoms Disorder as a Moderating Variable: Study on Medical Student

Abstract

Human as a living creature has two component; body (soma) and mind/soul (psyche). The reciprocal relationship between them has been studied in philosophy and medical field. A supporting theory states “A disturbance in one component would cause a disturbance to the other”. Example of the possible disturbance is stress (mentally) or physical pain/symptoms (physically). The theory has a similar definition to a specific clinical disorder; somatic symptoms disorder (SSD) that will be used as a moderator. This study aims to know the relationship between perceived stress (PSS) and physical symptoms (PHQ), and in what level would SSD moderate the relation between both variables. The subjects of this research were 152 medical students whom are doing internship. The data gathered were processed using SPSS and analyzed with regression with moderator model. The results shows a significant relationship between PSS and PHQ (r 2 of 0.40, p=0.000<0.001). The focal predictor shows the moderator only works only for subjects that are categorized on „low‟ in SSD score. Showing up to 0.2533 scores as effect and p=0.0001<0.001. Linear regression between PSS and PHQ shows an r 2 =0.18, p=0.000<0.001; indicating that with or without SSD, the relationship between PSS and PHQ remain to have a significant relation.