Health Anxiety
Health anxiety, also called illness anxiety disorder or hypochondriasis, is when you spend an excessive amount of time worrying about if you’re ill and getting ill to the point where it starts to take over your life. This condition is related to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and people may confuse bodily sensations as a serious illness. Symptoms of health anxiety include constantly worrying about your health, frequently checking yourself for signs of an illness, needing constant reassurance from others that you’re not sick, and worrying that a medical test missed something. Additional symptoms include obsessively researching health information, avoiding anything that involves talking about a serious illness such as TV commercials, and acting as if you’re ill.
This condition can alternate in severity with an increase in age or during stressful times. The excessive anxiety about getting ill causes severe distress that disrupts an individual’s life on a regular basis. Although there is not a clear-cut answer as to the cause of this condition, there are three factors that play a role: beliefs, family and past experiences. The belief that you might have a hard time tolerating uncertainty over unusual bodily sensations can lead to the misinterpretation that all body sensations are serious. Having parents that worry too much about their own health or yours can be a cause. Additionally, having past experiences with a serious illness in childhood can cause fear of physical sensations.
Risk factors associated with health anxiety include being in a stressful time in your life, the threat of a serious illness that turned out to not be serious, a history of child abuse, serious childhood illness or a parent with a serious illness, personality traits like being a worrier, and excessive health-related internet use. Because this condition has a negative impact on a person’s daily life, complications will arise. Complications include relationship or family problems, work-related performance problems or absences, problems functioning in daily life that could result in a disability, financial problems due to medical bills, and having another mental health disorder.
Those living with health anxiety have options as to how they can properly handle and treat the condition. Seeking professional advice as soon as possible will help symptoms from getting worse and disrupting your life. Learning to recognize when you’re stressed and how it impacts your body can be done by regularly practicing stress management and relaxation techniques. If you see a professional for health anxiety it’s important to stick with the treatment plan to prevent a relapse or from symptoms getting worse.
Source: Mayo Clinic, NHS