ReviewA Contemporary Conceptual Model of Hypochondriasis
Section snippets
DEVELOPMENT OF HEALTH ANXIETY
It is widely accepted that anxiety is best understood as a response to a perceived threat,11 with the degree of anxiety experienced being proportional to the importance and imminence of the perceived threat. Thus, issues perceived as central to one's own welfare naturally form the focal point of problems involving excessive anxiety. Because most people would consider a threat to their own physical health as vitally important, it is not surprising that health-focused anxiety is a common
WHY DOES HEALTH ANXIETY PERSIST DESPITE REASSURANCE?
Most people at some point in their lives entertain concerns about their physical health.12 In most instances these concerns diminish when the person realizes they are unfounded, such as when the patient gets feedback from a physician or looks up corrective information on a Web site. However, for patients with HC, even though their concerns about physical symptoms are inaccurate, something appears to interfere with the effects of corrective information. Hence, such patients continue to
TREATMENT
Understanding factors in the development and maintenance of HC is critical to formulating an effective treatment strategy. It follows from the biopsychosocial formulation presented herein that treatment must help patients recognize and modify their incorrect beliefs and assumptions concerning illness and eliminate barriers to self-correction of such faulty beliefs. This treatment approach, called cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), is a set of procedures that are designed to weaken maladaptive
IS HC A FORM OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER?
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that involves intrusive anxiety-evoking thoughts (obsessions) and urges to perform behavioral or mental rituals (compulsions) that serve to reduce obsessional anxiety. It has been suggested that because of similarity in symptoms HC belongs to a spectrum of OCD-related disorders.24 Specifically, the unremitting thoughts and fears about illness that endure despite reassurance in HC patients have been likened to obsessional thoughts in OCD
CONCLUSION
Once considered secondary to other psychiatric illnesses (ie, mood disorders), HC is now understood to often exist as a primary problem. Frequently a drain on medical resources, patients with HC can be viewed as essentially having an anxiety disorder in which intense fear is focused on the possibility that they might be seriously physically ill. The processes that contribute to the development and maintenance of health anxiety consist largely of erroneous beliefs and assumptions about health
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Health anxiety and attentional control interact to predict uncertainty-related attentional biases
2022, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :The relationship between IU and health anxiety may be conceptualized in terms of information processing biases. Several models of health anxiety suggest that attentional biases toward internal and external health-related threat cues are important factors in the development and maintenance of health anxiety (e.g., Abramowitz et al., 2002; Warwick & Salkovskis, 1990; Williams, 2004). However, empirical studies of attentional biases within health anxiety have yielded inconsistent results.
Health Anxiety
2022, Comprehensive Clinical Psychology, Second EditionThe Concept of Health Anxiety
2019, The Clinician's Guide to Treating Health Anxiety: Diagnosis, Mechanisms, and Effective Treatment