 The psychosomatic framework additionally sees mental and emotional states as capable of significantly influencing the course of any physical illness.Psychiatry traditionally distinguishes between psychosomatic disorders, disorders in which mental factors play a significant role in the development, expression, or resolution of a physical illness, and somatoform disorders, disorders in which mental factors are the sole cause of a physical illness.It is difficult to establish for certain whether an illness has a psychosomatic component.