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You get mobbing victims, burnout cases, people with agorophobia etc.... In Germany they often also treat people with chronic pain.

I've nursed many people with psychsomatic disorders, a wonderfully frustrating phenomenon, as you say, but I'm incredulous that anyone with such a disorder would go anywhere near a clinic that was named as such. I found that a core belief of 90% of psychosomatic disorders was that they had been misdiagnosed and that the medics simply hadn't found the underlying cause. As you say, this belief leads them endlessly to seek medical confirmation. I suppose the clinic might be a good place for those already on the way to recovery who have admitted to themselves that such a thing as psychomsomatic disorders might exist....But I did work with people with very long-standing mental health problems, so my perspective is probably a bit skewed! Apologies, Diane, I wasn't qite serious...I can hear you groaning!

It sounds like you use the term psychosomatic a little differently than we do. But, chronic pain would certainly be in the same category as ours. Docs are very reluctant to prescribe narcotic type pain meds, anymore, because there is so much addiction to them. So, they're referred to pain management clinics, which combine counseling and things like meditation.

Not groaning! You're absolutely right about the avoidance of treatment. Those kinds of people are very insulted if their medical doctor refers them for MH treatment. They either don't show up or don't last long in treatment. My clients were also chronically mentally ill (schizophrenics and such), not so much the "worried well." It was a county clinic, so we didn't have many of the latter type. I would have gone nuts myself in a private practice, falling asleep listening to "worries." I prefer the severely mentally ill, by far, who are often quite courageous and interesting - if difficult.