Studies on the Psychosomatic Functioning of Ill-Health According to Eastern and Western Medicine 6.: Psychosomatic Characteristic of Anxiety and Depression

In the accompanying paper "Psychosomatic Characteristics of Anxiety and the Anxiety Affinitive Constitution (Provisional Term) in Medical Students," we suggest that anassessment of the relationship between anxiety and the state of thoracic-abdominal balance of breathing, and the creation of an anxiety-affinitive constitution index (AACI) derived from that assessment, will be indispensable for furthering research in the future. Using the tenets of Oriental psychosomatic medicine, we examined in this research medical students (N = 104) from whom we had received fully-informed consent for the research in writing, and patients who met the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders (N = 18) and major depressive episodes (N = 20). We then identified their anxiety and depressive psychosomatic traits in accordance with an assessment of the relationship between anxiety and the state of their thoracic-abdominal balance of breathing, and the AACI derived from that assessment. We performed a multiple regression analysis with the STAI trait anxiety as the dependent variable, and the parameters of the somatic tests as the independent variables. We obtained the formula that AACI = - 62.9 + 72.9 × the thoracic/abdominal respiratory movement ratio (the fractal dimensionvalue for the thoracic respiratory curve/the fractal dimension value for the abdominal respiratory curve) + 22.5 × the horizontal eye movement (the fractal dimension value) + 2.4 × the dental indentation of the tongue (existence, 1; none 0). We then obtained data regarding a symptomatological, constitutional, and nosological diagnosis of anxiety and depression based on the AACI values of the Student's t test calculated for the medical students and the anxiety disorder patients with major depressive episodes, and a statistical analysis using ANOVA. We believe the AACI we created in this research will be very important and significant for the preventive treatment of lifestyle illnesses and stress-related diseases.