Hypochondriasis, Illness Anxiety Disorder, Health Anxiety
Signs and Symptoms of Hypochondria
Almost everyone worries intermittently about illness. People with hypochondria live in dread that they have a serious disease . The symptoms they worry over can manifest anywhere in the body. A headache is proof of a brain tumor. Stomach pain is a sign of pancreatic cancer. A sore muscle indicates multiple sclerosis. Hypochondriacs search for proof online or by going to doctors, often “doctor-shopping” from provider to provider.
Somewhere between 5 to 10 percent of people are thought to have hypochondria, but doctors find their practices disproportionately burdened by such patients, who may repeatedly call with every complaint and concern. More females than males have the disorder, and it generally begins in middle adulthood. In c hildren, the disorder manifests in recurrent abdominal pain or headache.
Patients with Illness Anxiety Disorder or Somatic Symptom Disorder spend a great deal of time monitoring body sensations and visiting doctors. They spend considerable time seeking health information online, feeling distressed after online health research, and then making appointments for doctor visits—a phenomenon sometimes dubbed cyberchondria. They specialize in self-diagnosis and frequently demand medical tests, even when their doctor considers such tests unnecessary. As a result, they may have medical bills 10 times the national average.
Nevertheless, they are not reassured when their doctor reports that no medical problem can be found, and they may be consistently disappointed or even angry with their physician for failing to find an illness. They are likely to consider their doctor unskilled and uncaring. They may go from doctor to doctor (“doctor-hopping”) seeking diagnosis of the illness they fear is eating away at them. Many researchers who have studied the condition believe that people with hypochondria are looking more for care and concern than for cure.
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