Document is current

Article History

Received: 20 July 2024

Accepted: 30 May 2025

First Online: 11 June 2025

Declarations

:

: The participants gave their verbal informed consent before the interviews. As this study neither involved vulnerable groups nor any forms of interventions, there were no specific ethical issues to consider. Therefore, the study did not require ethical approval as it did not fall under paragraph 6 of the Helsinki Declaration, the guidelines of the Ethics Committee of the Hamburg Medical Association in Germany, the Medical Research Involving Human Subjects Act (WMO) in the Netherlands, Law No. 3 of January 11, 2018, Ministerial Decree of January 30, 2023, Regional Law No. 40/2005 in Italy, or the guidelines of the Bioethics Committee at the Medical University of Wroclaw in Poland. All methods followed relevant guidelines and regulations, including the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was pre-registered at the Open Science Framework registry (OSF: ).

: Not applicable.

: BL reports research funding (no personal honoraria) from the German Research Foundation, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the German Innovation Committee at the Joint Federal Committee, the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, the European Joint Programme for Rare Diseases (EJP), the Ministry of Science, Research and Equality of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany, and the Foundation Psychosomatics of Spinal Diseases, Stuttgart, Germany. He received remunerations for several scientific book articles from various book publishers, from the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) for interviews in medical knowledge programmes on public television, and as a committee member from Aarhus University, Denmark. He received travel expenses from the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine (EAPM), and accommodation and meals from the Societatea de Medicina Biopsyhosociala, Romania, for a presentation at the EAPM Academy at the Conferința Națională de Psihosomatică, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, October 2023. He received remuneration and travel expenses for lecture at the Lindauer Psychotherapiewochen, April 2024. He is President of the German College of Psychosomatic Medicine (DKPM) (unpaid) since March 2024 and was a member of the Board of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine (EAPM) (unpaid) until 2022. He is member of the EIFFEL Study Oversight Committee (unpaid). FC reports research funding (no personal honoraria) from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, the Italian Ministry of University and Research. She is Editor in Chief of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. All other authors have no competing interests to report.