Health anxiety can be more destructive than illness itself
Statistics are showing that one to two per cent of the population have an irrational fear of being seriously ill - and this figure is set to rise.*
A major implication of this condition, called pathological health anxiety, is that both money and time could be wasted within the NHS that could have been used for patients who have a genuine illness.
Pathological health anxiety (previously known as hypochondria) is a preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness when in actual fact the person is perfectly healthy. It is characterised by the excessive seeking of reassurance from doctors or family members.
Catherine O'Neill, Services Manager at the helpline charity Anxiety UK, said: “Pathological health anxiety is one of the things we get most calls about. The common fears are HIV, cancer and illnesses at the more severe end of the spectrum.
“Quite often, we get people who nursed someone through cancer and they become preoccupied with the thought that they have the disease too, or it develops because they have heard or read about someone with the illness."
As the number of people affected rises, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which aims to change thought patterns and behaviour, has been found to help those with health anxiety.
Professor Peter Tyrer, Head of the Centre for Mental Health at Imperial College London, is leading a study of 448 people with health anxiety. He describes one patient who was so worried about having a heart attack that he hadn’t left the house for a year, but after accessing CBT, he was able to go on holiday.
Such successes are providing positive evidence that using CBT can ease health anxiety and save the NHS money by reducing the need for tests and emergency hospital admissions.
But
waiting
lists
for
CBT
on
the
NHS
can
be
long
in
some
areas
and
the
therapy
is
not
widespread.
Westfield
Health
provides
an
Employee
Assistance
Programme
(EAP)
including
CBT
as
a
standard
benefit
on
its
Foresight
Healthcare
Plan.
FirstAssist, one of the market leaders in the provision of health and wellbeing products and services, provides Westfield’s 24-hour counselling and advice line, which offers policyholders round-the-clock access to specialist teams of qualified and experienced counsellors, lawyers and medical staff, as well as face-to-face counselling and CBT sessions.
More information on the Foresight Plan is available on this website.
* The Guardian
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