{"id":2522,"date":"2026-02-25T12:30:38","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T01:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2026-04-30T13:21:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:21:00","slug":"medically-unexplained-symptoms-when-young-people-have-real-physical-symptoms-with-no-organic-cause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/2026\/02\/25\/medically-unexplained-symptoms-when-young-people-have-real-physical-symptoms-with-no-organic-cause\/","title":{"rendered":"Medically Unexplained Symptoms: When young people have real physical symptoms with no &#8220;organic&#8221; cause"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1186138629?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Shaping care for children, young people, and their families across campus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Synopsis<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is common for young people to present with physical symptoms that cannot be adequately explained by an &#8220;organic medical&#8221; illness. In the past, there have been inconsistencies in terminology and treatment approaches for these presentations, partly because of the stigma that suggests they are less &#8220;real&#8221; than an identified organic medical illness.<\/p>\n<p>This Grand Round provides a practical framework to help staff manage and care for medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) in children and young people. It also introduces a suite of new resources developed by the Campus Mental Health Strategy, including an eLearn module, family-facing guide, and more.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Speakers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dr Andrew Court <\/strong>is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist working at The Royal Children&#8217;s Hospital. He initially trained as a paediatrician and has a particular interest in the mind-body connection. He brings over 40 years of clinical expertise in MUS and led the development of the new suite of resources.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dr Alexandra Cussen <\/strong>is an Adolescent Medicine paediatrician at The Royal Children\u2019s Hospital, working clinically with young people who experience eating disorders and MUS. Alex holds a master&#8217;s degree in public health and is undertaking a PhD. She&#8217;s worked in medical writing, policy, guidance and health curriculum development, and has produced consumer-facing health resources with the World Health Organization, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, and the RCH.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is common for young people to present with physical symptoms that cannot be adequately explained by an &#8220;organic medical&#8221; illness. In the past, there have been inconsistencies in terminology and treatment approaches for these presentations, partly because of the stigma that suggests they are less &#8220;real&#8221; than an identified organic medical illness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5109,466,7947,7930,5107,7949,7937,7942,12690,5065,5658],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adolescents","category-clinical","category-education-and-research","category-general-interest","category-mental-health","category-paediatrics","category-psychiatry","category-psychology","category-public-health","category-rch","category-video"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2523,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/2523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/grandrounds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}