Our New Book!

Hi All! The Heightened Illness Concern Team just published a new book on hypochondriasis geared towards patients, their family, and their friends. It is full of information on the history of the disorder, conditions that are similar to and often occur with hypochondriasis, descriptions of different treatment options, and great anonymous narratives from patients who have suffered from illness worries. Check it out, it's a great read. Link to the book website -The HIC Team

NY Magazine article

Our work has been featured in media multiple times. For example, in the NY Magazine last year :)

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Don't forget to check out our YouTube channel for videos with Dr. Fallon discussing hypochondria.

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An article about our study! (click here)

It's exciting! There is a thorough article about our study published in the New York magazine recently. It talks about the suffering of people with illness worries as well as describes the treatments we offer. Check out the link!

More thoughts on health and worries...

We live in the age of space exploration, wireless communication, heart transplants, and genetic engineering. Yet, we are still plagued by fears of death and diseases, maybe even more than our ancestors centuries ago. It seems that medical advances and technological progress did little to alleviate the mental angst of being mortal. For some people, worries about having a serious undiagnosed illness or preoccupations with medically unexplained bodily sensations and symptoms mark a substantial part of their time or even take over and become the main focus of their daily life. Paradoxically, the desire to prevent getting seriously sick becomes a crippling force that takes the joy out of living, destroys relationships and pushes the affected person to go from doctor to doctor in an exhausting quest for a cure or a definitive diagnosis. On the other extreme, there are people who avoid doctor visits at all cost, terrified that their worst fears will be confirmed. Technology inadvertently adds to the suffering as people with illness worries are often powerless in the face of medical information bombarded with media, about diseases and epidemics, medical TV shows, and advertisements. There is the Internet, with detailed and graphic disease information just a click away at any time of day or night. There is even a new colloquial term “cyberchondriac” for a person who spends hours researching symptoms and diseases online unable to stop despite the mounting anxiety, sometimes to the point of feeling overwhelmed or developing a panic attack. According to statistics, about one in a hundred of Americans has illness worries intense and prolonged enough to receive a clinical diagnosis of hypochondriasis. About one in ten to one in twenty-five people suffer from less intense illness worries that still affect their life. For a long time hypochondriasis was considered untreatable, and frustrated doctors were weary of such patients and anxious to get rid of them. Modern Western medicine is focused on diagnosing and treating intense and life-threatening conditions. For example, doctors can replace arteries, hearts, kidneys or bring back someone who suffered a serious injury, yet migraines, chronic pains, and fatigue are still not very well understood or treated. It seems mind-body interconnection is more at play there; an interconnection that science is still in the process of understanding. In the mean time, miscommunications between patients and physicians frequently lead to mutual dissatisfaction and wasted time, money, and other resources. Lately, however, a substantial progress has been made in helping people to live a happier and more fulfilling life despite having some illness concerns or bothersome sensations. Clinical research conducted in the US, UK, Netherlands and Italy has shown that a group of medications – selective serotonin intake inhibitors – as well as a special type of psychotherapy – cognitive-behavioral therapy – are effective in helping people with illness worries to gain their life back. In addition, these treatments do not take long to make a difference – in 2 to 3 months patients notice a significant change in how they feel. There is another ongoing treatment study at Columbia and Harvard Universities that explores whether the combination of both psychotherapy and medication is better than each of the treatments alone. The medication works by correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain, while the psychotherapy teaches people new skills and habits to deal with illness concerns more effectively and to be less distressed by them. Overall, excessive illness worry might seriously affect one’s life. It can linger on for years or even decades. There is no need to continue to suffer – there is hope and treatments that help. For more information about the disorder, diagnosis and help available visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypochondria http://www.illnessworry.cumc.columbia.edu/ http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/health-info/docs/3700/3783.asp?index=9886 http://www.thehealthstudy.com/index.html

Influence of Others

The book "It's Not All in Your Head," by Dr's Gordan Asmundson and Steven Taylor, poses the question of to what degree the media influences our belief in the possibility we have a disease, on page 29. In 2003 the media focused heavily on reporting the danger of bioterrorism and SARS. symptoms of which were reported to be increase coughing and fever. As indicated by Asmundson and Taylor, such reports resulted in an increase in the general population's vigilance toward our own respiratory health. More interestingly, they report -as determined through their own research- people with heightened illness concern were more likely than those without heightened illness concern to attribute a regular cough to a more serious infection such as an anthrax infection, or the SARS virus. This is only one example of the manner in which the media can affect how much attention we pay to our bodily noises and feelings.

In Admundson and Taylor's book, they discuss what expert Dr. Arthur Barsky calls an, "amplifying somatic style" found in many people who worry a lot about having a serious disease. They say, "This style is characterized by the tendency to attend to and be bothered by a wide range of bodily sensations that aren't generally related to disease. This amplifying somatic style is believed to be a trait that may be biologically based or a product of learning during the early years of childhood." (Pg 31 of "It's Not All in Your Head") If you are wondering if your style of thinking about illness fits Dr. Barsky's description, talk to your doctor and to family and friends. Ask them to help you limit your media intake, and try to shield yourself from potentially distressing reports about illness in the news.

Paying attention to your body can be helpful in catching something before it becomes serious. However, if your doctor has assured you that a bodily sign is not related to a disease but instead to normal bodily functioning, you may have an amplifying somatic style. If so, and you find that you are getting agitated over media reports related to illness, then make sure to take special care to limit your intake of media outlets until you can seek help from family, friends, or a professional mental health specialist. A professional will be able to help you consider the ways in which you learned about illness as a child affect the way you perceive the media reports now, as well as determine ways to help moderate your worry.

Every day we are bombarded with new reports of bird flu, TB and all sorts of other epidemics crossing the world. When evaluating ourselves for an illness that we've heard about in the media, we must try to keep in mind that every time we notice something remarkable going on with our bodies, it may be an indication that we are simply paying more attention to our bodies than we usually would be. It is all too easy to attribute the warning signs listed on the news programs to our own bodies, and all we have to do is pay too close attention. We must keep in mind that oftentimes these "alarming" symptoms we feel are "false alarms;" that is to say, harmless sensations that prompt worry. (ERD)