27/07/2010

Health anxiety affects over half a million people

Thousands of people who are convinced that they are suffering from serious medical conditions may just be in need of an effective anxiety treatment, as The Guardian reports that pathological health anxiety - once known as hypochondria - is estimated to affect as many as 620,417 people in the UK.

Health anxiety is a condition characterised by the excessive seeking of reassurance of good health from doctors or family members. Sufferers find themselves obsessed by the possibility they are suffering from an undetected and generally fatal condition or disease.

Often, individuals with this problem will interpret the symptoms of another, real but minor illness as evidence of something deeper and more serious. Even when they seek medical advice and receive an overwhelmingly negative diagnosis, the reassurance is only temporarily of help in overcoming anxiety and they soon become convinced that they have simply been misdiagnosed.

According to Professor Peter Tyrer, head of the centre for mental health at Imperial College London, this condition is particularly common among those who have already treatment for a medical condition. Speaking to The Guardian, he said that "about 1-2% of the population have pathological health anxiety" with the figure rising to 10% for those with a previous condition.

Professor Tyrer believes that the number of cases is in fact rising as people seek information on illnesses via the internet. "The internet tells you everything and nothing," he said.

His beliefs are shared by helpline charity Anxiety UK; speaking in the same article, Catherine O'Neill of the charity says that health anxiety is "one of the things we get most calls about."

She agrees that the internet, alongside media coverage of failures to detect illnesses, can distort people's view of the chances of them actually having a severe condition and not just a minor illness. "Type in flu symptoms and you will be able to find a huge range of diseases from a common cold to the early stages of an HIV infection," she told The Guardian.

The major problem in treating the condition though is that professional reassurance does not work in the long term. O'Neill says she has seen people "who have convinced themselves they have a brain tumour - they go to their GP, they go for scans. When they are reassured they don't have a tumour they still think 'what if they missed it?'"

"Reassurance only works in the short term. It isn't long before those fears return."