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Diane Stelzer Morrow, MD
Winston-Salem, NC

JAMA. 2002;288:3084-3085.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Recently I've been having a discussion with Susan, a patient who has bipolar disorder. She tells me she is afraid her illness is her fault. She believes that if she were a stronger person, she would be able to overcome this illness, that if she were a better person, she would perhaps never have gotten it in the first place. This morning she told me she sometimes worries that God is punishing her with this illness.

Susan is certainly not the first person I've encountered with such beliefs. I practice family medicine. Perhaps because my first job after residency was in a clinic that served Salvadoran refugees—war survivors—and because I saw how frequently the stress of trauma and homesickness took a toll on their bodies, I have long been interested in connections between mind and body. And I have benefited from the legacy of those who . . . [Full Text of this Article]