ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychological Therapy and Psychosomatics
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital mindfulness in primary care: Enhancing health through technologyView all 15 articles
Improving mental health through body-awareness with Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy in patients with Persistent Somatic Symptoms: an explorative cohort study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- 2Stichting Christelijke Hogeschool Windesheim, Zwolle, Netherlands
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Introduction: This study explored the changes in mental health and body-awareness in patients with severe persistent somatic symptoms (PSS) treated with multidisciplinary Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy. Methods: In this longitudinal study 56 patients with severe somatic-symptom disorder (DSM-5) were included. Analyses were conducted on available outcome data from 32–38 patients. All were treated with a multidisciplinary DIT program for 6 months in a specialized care facility. Patients were followed up during treatment with the questionnaires Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) and Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) at baseline, 3 months and 6 months. Change was analysed with repeated measures ANOVA. The association between change in MAIA and change in MHC-SF was explored with linear regression analysis. Results: Both mental health (MHC-SF total score 28 to 33, p<0.001) and interoceptive awareness (MAIA score 88 to 92 p=0.045) increased after treatment. The improvement was mostly seen in the psychological and social wellbeing subscales of the MHC-SF and the self-regulation and body listening subscales of the MAIA. A higher pre- to post-treatment change on the MAIA was associated with a higher change on the MHC-SF (R2 = 0.352, B = 1.464, p < 0.001). Conclusions: This study shows that patients with PSS 1 have lower mental health scores relative to general population norm, 2) seem to have reduced capacity for interoceptive awareness 3) improve in both areas after completing DIT for PSS and 4) shows that improvement in interoceptive awareness was associated with improvement in mental health. Interoception based interventions in DIT-PSS might be a starting point for adequate treatment of PSS.
Keywords: body awereness, Mental Health, Persistent somatic symptoms, psychodynamic psychotherapy, Somatic symptom disorder
Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 04 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Rovers, Braam, Scheffers and Scharroo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jordy Rovers
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