Risk factors may include: Age between 20 and 30 years. Serious childhood illness or trauma. Mental disorders, such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality disorders, and depression.
Some people with hypochondria have a medical condition that they worry about excessively. Other people with hypochondria are healthy, but have an overwhelming fear about their health in the future. For example, they might think: “What if I get cancer?”
Age. Hypochondriasis can begin in people of any age; the most common age at onset is thought to be early adulthood. The clinician should consider a diagnosis of hypochondriasis in older teenagers who have a history of prolonged preoccupation with having a serious illness.
This condition is caused by an oversensitivity to the way a person feels, combined with serious panic attacks that mimic terrible diseases – all leading to the person feeling as though something must be wrong with their health. Even generalized anxiety disorder can cause these types of issues.
"Hypochondriasis is essentially a male condition." "Hypochondriasis is three or four times more prevalent in women than in men."
It is just a condition that they are born with. Other times it can be brought on by a traumatic event in a person's life that leads them to feeling unsafe. Also, small fits of hypochondria can be brought on after hearing about a serious illness constantly, or learning about a disease in more depth.
Illness anxiety disorder usually begins in early or middle adulthood and may get worse with age. Often for older individuals, health-related anxiety may focus on the fear of losing their memory. Risk factors for illness anxiety disorder may include: A time of major life stress.
Hypochondriac comes ultimately from the Greek word hypokhondria, which literally means “under the cartilage (of the breastbone).” In the late 16th century, when hypochondriac first entered the English language, it referred to the upper abdomen.
A hypochondriac is someone who lives with the fear that they have a serious, but undiagnosed medical condition, even though diagnostic tests show there is nothing wrong with them. Hypochondriacs experience extreme anxiety from the bodily responses most people take for granted.
Trauma or abuse
Experiencing physical or emotional trauma can lead to hypochondria. This can include previous health trauma caused by the person having a serious illness, or by observing someone else experience a serious illness. People who experience extreme stress which they cannot relieve are also vulnerable.
Patients with hypochondriasis often are not aware that depression and anxiety produce their own physical symptoms, and mistake these symptoms for manifestations of another mental or physical disorder or disease.
But here's the irony: People who are overly worried about their health are also more likely to actually develop some serious health problems, according to a large new study out of Norway, published this month in the journal BMJ Open. Sometimes being right does indeed suck.
Curing hypochondria, or the obsessive search for cures, does not happen instantly. It takes time, effort, and commitment to changing one's life for the better. However, with therapy, medication if necessary, and positive lifestyle changes, you can train your mind to use its curative powers for good rather than ill.
People who have hypochondria actually believe they are ill, but do not manipulate test results. People who malinger pretend to be ill to gain some sort of benefit, such as avoiding military duty or trying to obtain compensation.
While some people's obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) focuses on their health, health anxiety (sometimes called hypochondriasis) is not a form of OCD, and OCD can involve thoughts and anxieties that aren't related to illness. If you're experiencing OCD, health anxiety, or both, effective treatments are available.
Do hypochondriacs feel real symptoms? Yes. Hypochondria can trigger symptoms associated with anxiety including: stomachaches, dizziness, headache, dry mouth, muscle tension, fatigue, increased heart rate, sweating, shortness of breath, and a frequent urge to use the bathroom.
Contrary to the idea that "hypochondriacs" are simply looking for attention, the origins of someone's illness anxiety are often highly specific. "There's often a trigger," says Helen Tyrer, a senior clinical research fellow at Imperial College London and author of the book Tackling Health Anxiety.
Here are some pivotal details of this recent study. Scrupulously controlling for as many variables as possible, this research team found that individuals who complained about their health were three times more likely to die in the next 30 years than those who perceived themselves as more able-bodied and hearty.
Hypochondria is when you have abnormal anxiety about your health, especially an irrational fear of suffering from a serious disease. An introverted narcissist often suffers from hypochondria. They use sickness and disease to garner attention.
Hypochondria is itself a form of mild psychosis. The hypochondriac has a deep and ungrounded worry about having or developing a serious mental illness. Paranoia and suspiciousness are classical traits of psychosis but they can be subtle.
“Many of the symptoms that hypochondriacs feel are often physical sensations caused by anxiety or depression that can go along with hypochondria. The constant worrying can release harmful stress hormones and do real physical damage.”
Your therapist will help you break this cycle by encouraging you to challenge negative thoughts and helping you replace them with more realistic and helpful views. You'll also learn to work with uncertainty specifically about your health and decrease self-checking and reassurance-seeking behaviours.
Aches in the body: This is a common symptom of hypochondriacs. They seem to perpetually be suffering from headaches, stomach aches, or whole-body aches. Most often, these are subjective complaints, although some patients may really have pain.
Illness anxiety disorder (previously called hypochondriasis) is a psychiatric disorder defined by excessive worry about having or developing a serious undiagnosed medical condition.