Vegetative dystonia syndrome as a somatoform disorder

Despite the fact that there is still no consensus on concept and use of vegetative vascular dystonia as a diagnostic term in Russian literature, this diagnosis has become firmly established in clinical practice. In this article we have tried to reconcile two competing concepts - psychovegetative syndrome and vascular dystonia - primarily on the basis that both concepts reflect functional disorders of suprasegmental apparatus of the autonomic nervous system (limbic-reticular complex, reticular formation of the brain stem) and have more similarities than differences, which allows us to include them in a general group of somatoform disorders.