2023-12-15 15:19:23
An extensive Swedish study, published in the journal in ‘JAMA Psychiatry‘, has discovered a paradox in people diagnosed with an excessive fear of serious illnesses: they tend to die earlier than those who are not hypochondriacs.
Hypochondria, now called illness anxiety disorder, is a rare condition with symptoms that go beyond the health concerns a person may experience. The calls hypochondriacs They cannot overcome their fears even though the results of their physical examinations and laboratory tests are normal.
However, according to this study, people with hypochondria die earlier than those who are not.
«Many of us are mild hypochondriacs. But there are also people on the other end of the spectrum who live in a perpetual state of worry, suffering and rumination about having a serious illness,” says Jonathan E. Alpert of the Montefiore Medical Center in New York (EE.UU.).
The most common symptom of hypochondria is excessive worrying about your health. A study published in ‘JAMA’ defines somatic symptom disorder as “a persistent fear or belief that one suffers from a serious undiagnosed medical illness.”
The authors point out that it affects up to 5% of outpatients. In short, the disorder is a mental health condition in which a person worries excessively that they are sick, to the point where the anxiety itself becomes debilitating. Worrying about health becomes a disease.
People with the disorder suffer, and “it’s important to take it seriously and treat it,” adds Alpert, who was not involved in the new study. Treatment may include cognitive behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, education, and sometimes antidepressant medications.
Researchers found that people with the diagnosis have a higher risk of death from natural and unnatural causes, especially suicide. Chronic stress and its impact on the body could explain some of the difference, the authors wrote.
“The study addresses a clear gap in the medical literature”, assures David Mataix-Cols, from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the investigation. «We were lucky because the Swedish classification system for diseases has a separate code for hypochondria, which allowed the analysis of data from thousands of people over 24 years, from 1997 to 2020.»
Previous research suggested that the risk of suicide might be lower for people with hypochondria, but “our intuition, based on clinical experience, was that this would be incorrect,” says Mataix-Cols.
In the study, the risk of death by suicide was four times higher for people with the diagnosis.
Symptoms
Somatic symptom disorder is a chronic condition. Its severity may depend on age, the person’s tendency to worry, and the amount of stress they face. The most frequent symptoms are:
Fear to normal functions: To a person with hypochondria, normal bodily functions, such as heartbeat, sweating, and bowel movements, may seem like symptoms of a serious illness or condition.
Fear to minor abnormalities: a runny nose, slightly swollen glands or a small sore can feel like serious problems.
Verification– Regularly check the body for signs of illness.
They examined 4,100 people diagnosed with hypochondria and compared them to 41,000 people similar in age, sex, and county of residence. They used a measure called ‘person-years’, which takes into account the number of people and how long they were followed.
Overall mortality rates were higher in people with hypochondria, 8.5 versus 5.5 per 1,000 person-years. People with hypochondria died at a younger age than others, with a mean age of 70 versus 75. Their risk of death from circulatory and respiratory diseases was higher. Cancer was an exception; the risk of death was almost the same.
Referring an overly anxious patient to mental health professionals requires care as they may feel offended because they feel they are being accused of imagining symptoms.
This study, the authors write, “is the first, to our knowledge, to suggest that people with hypochondriasis have an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Excess mortality was attributed to both natural and unnatural causes, particularly suicide, which can generally be classified as preventable.
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