ORIGINAL ARTICLE The association of experience of violence and somatization, depression, and alexithymia: a sample of women with medically unexplained symptoms in Turkey Dilek Anuk 1 & Güler Bahadır 2 Received: 12 April 2017 /Accepted: 17 July 2017 /Published online: 27 July 2017 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria 2017 Abstract The aim of the study was to examine the relation- ship between the levels of somatization, depression as well as alexithymia, and MUS in women going through violence ex- perience in three contexts (childhood, adulthood, and both childhood and adulthood). The study was performed on 180 patients attending the Internal Medicine Department of Istanbul University Medical Faculty. The data of women with MUS (n = 50) were compared those of women with acute physical conditions (n = 46) and chronic physical conditions (n = 84). Semi-structured Interview Form, Childhood Abuse and Neglect Inventory, Brief Symptom Inventory, Beck Depression Inventory, and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale were administered. The levels of somatization and depression were found to be higher in women who were exposed to emotional abuse (EA) and physical abuse (PA) in adulthood in the MUS group compared with those of the women ex- posed to EA and PA in adulthood in the other groups. The levels of somatization, depression, and alexithymia in the MUS group exposed to childhood emotional abuse (CEA) were also higher than those in the controls exposed to CEA. The levels of somatization and alexithymia in the MUS group who were exposed to childhood physical abuse (CPA) were higher than those in the controls exposed to CPA. The levels of somatization and depression in the MUS group who were exposed to violence both in childhood and in adulthood were higher than those in the controls who experienced violence both in childhood and in adulthood. Most women exposed to domestic violence present to health care institutions with various physical and psychological symptoms in Turkey. So, it is important that health caregivers also ask questions about experiences of violence and psychological symptoms in wom- en presenting with medically unexplained symptoms. Keywords Medically unexplained symptoms . Experience of violence . Somatization . Depression . Alexithymia Introduction Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are described as the symptoms that prompt patients to seek health care but are considered as unexplained despite appropriate medical assess- ments (Richardson et al. 2002). Psychological factors appear first in individuals with MUS and the rate of psychiatric dis- orders seems to be twice as frequent in these patients (Kirmayer et al. 2004; Feder et al. 2001). MUS are emphasized to be associated with a variety of psychological problems, as well as domestic violence (Goldblatt and Granot 2006; Eberhard-Gran et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2011). Women exposed to both physical and sexual violence express higher bodily symptoms compared with those without violence (Amar and Gennaro 2005 ). Nicolaidis et al. (2004) observed that any form of violence (physical-emotional) was associated with symptoms of de- pression and that it was related to at least six chronic symp- toms. A study of an internal disease department identified that women who experienced psychical or sexual abuse had much more frequent physical symptoms, depression, anxiety, soma- tization, lower self-respect, suicide attempts, higher alcohol * Dilek Anuk dilekanuk@yahoo.com 1 Department of Psychiatry, Department of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry, Istanbul Medical Faculty, Istanbul University, Capa, 34390 Istanbul, Turkey 2 Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul Medical Faculty, Istanbul University, Capa, 34390 Istanbul, Turkey Arch Womens Ment Health (2018) 21:93–103 DOI 10.1007/s00737-017-0762-5