Health anxiety: the silent, disabling epidemic

“We are glad to say, Mr Jones, that all your test results are normal and you have nothing to fear.” Mr Jones has received this message many times after being examined for many severe diseases such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and heart disease, which over the years he has been convinced he must have. Yet, this is the core of his problem—despite how much he would like to, he cannot do what the doctor says: stop worrying. He used to attend his general practitioner frequently to be reassured that nothing was wrong with him, but the reassurance was only short lived and then the worrying started all over again. After many years of distress, Mr Jones is embarrassed that he cannot control his health worries and preoccupation and has lately avoided contact with his GP, knowing it does not help him very much.

Mr Jones is not alone. He joins many others with health anxiety. This diagnosis is a relatively recent one that will be unfamiliar to many readers of this journal. It overlaps with hypochondriasis and the new “illness anxiety disorder”1 in the American classification DSM-5, …