[Avodah] Eating on Yom Kippur

[Ben Bradley]

RMB wrote:


  ' Kaf haChaim: If the medical professional or a significant minority
   among experts determine *that it is plausible* that they are a choleh,
   even if they do not believe it is indeed the case.'

'I think the KhC's point is not only his opinion, as otherwise it would
be permissible for someone who read a web page wand got convinced they
have something horrible to eat on Yom Kippur. I find that result absurd;
it seems to me everyone would have to have some criterion for avoiding
eating on YK due to hypocondria. This idea that the doctor must agree
there is some valid grounds for the patient's fear exist -- even if he
believes the fear is misplaced.'

Hypochondria doesn't exist in the modern medical lexicon.  Psychosomatic illness, or somatising illness, certainly does. The difference is that the latter involves real, if subjective, symptoms, which can be disabling. Meaning, again, that modern medicine takes symptoms at face value at doesn't say 'you're just making it up/neurotic/crazy', which would have been the case a few decades ago.
Someone with significant physical symptoms but no objective signs of illness like abnormal test results would certainly be considered 'ill' or even disabled by modern medicine. I presume such a patient would be a choleh in halacha and entitled to eat if they think they must.
Someone with mental health symptoms but no pain or other physical symptoms would have the same category of illness in medical terms. Would the Kaf HaChaim, and presumably other poskim, distinguish between the two such that one is a choleh and the other not? Are physical symptoms a different case to psychiatric symptoms?
Or is psychosomatic illness the same as psychiatric illness and neither would make someone choleh WRT yom kippur, remvoing the applicability of OC 681:1 to both?
I don't find it absurd to have subjective grounds to allow breaking the fast. The point is that lev yodeiah maras nafsho. The patient has to be genuinely concerned for their own pikuach nefesh , not just have read something online. But if they whole point of this halacha is that the patient knows themselves better then a doctor can, then we're already dealing explicitly with a patient's subjective assessment of their state of health.

A Gut Kvittel
Ben





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