Somatic symptoms unexplained by disease are common in all medical settings. The process of identifying such patients requires a clinical assessment often supported by clinical tests. Such assessments are time-consuming and expensive. Consequently the observation that such patients tend to report a greater number of symptom has led to the use of self-rated somatic symptom counts as a simpler and cheaper diagnostic aid and proxy measure for epidemiological surveys. However, despite their increasing popularity there is little evidence to support their validity.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 January 2026.
All research outputs
#12,436,002
of 34,545,128 outputs
Outputs from Journal of neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry
#4,706
of 8,865 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#97,768
of 259,510 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry
#52
of 96 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,545,128 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 8,865 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 15.0. This one is in the 26th percentile – i.e., 26% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 259,510 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 96 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
