Janaki Patel

IR-3/11 AP
2/12/18
Week of 2/12

Key terms/words

- Somatic symptoms: symptoms, such as pain or fatigue, to the point that it causes major

emotional distress and problems functioning

Citation

Viner, Russell, and Deborah Christie. “Fatigue and Somatic Symptoms.” NCBI

Annotation

These graphs provided an overview of adolescent girls and boys in Europe exhibiting signs of

headaches or other somatic symptoms. The first graph shows that girls exhibit more symptoms of

headaches than boys, and more frequently as well. However, this pattern is inconsistent in the

third graph. The third graph show that boys exhibit symptoms of serious morning fatigue four or

more times per week, but more girls show symptoms of serious morning fatigue one to three

times per week or less than once a week. The second graph shows the prevalence of somatic

symptoms such as dizziness, sleep problems, stomach ache, and backache in eleven to seventeen

year olds. It is apparent that the most frequently exhibited symptom are stomach aches. This

graph seems to have two of the same color in the key, although there are four different colored

bars. These graphs are important in making connections between the symptoms exhibited in

adolescents to the competing demands and pressures placed by society. This visual is a good
summary of the data to show the correlation between the type of symptom and the frequency, as

well as the gender and the frequency.