What Is Hypochondria?
Hypochondria is also known as somatoform disorder. It is a psychological clinical situation in which the person believes they are ill with a very serious pathology or worries excessively about their health believing that they will become ill.
This concern of the hypochondriac patient makes him interpret any sign or symptom, real or imagined, as a sign of seriousness. The state of health itself becomes an obsession.
To varying degrees, hypochondria affects up to 10% of the population. And it is more frequent in family environments in which one or more members suffer from it. Although there is no genetic transmission of hypochondria, it can be said that there are family ecosystems that are more aware of the disease than others.
Historically, the definition of hypochondria dates back to Ancient Greece. Already the students of Hippocrates, considered the first doctor, described it in their treatises. Often they linked it to states of melancholy and sadness.
This association with depressive aspects is not wrong. Neither is it when it is associated with states of anxiety and anguish. Although they are not the same, syndromes can occur in combination.
It is also important to differentiate hypochondria from pathophobia . In the latter, the person is afraid of having a serious illness, which is why he avoids medical consultations and complementary methods at all costs. He suspects that the results will be tragic.
On the other hand, the hypochondriac increases his consultations and studies because he is convinced that his disease, whatever it may be, exists and nobody finds it. He goes through different professionals in search of a diagnosis that, in general, he never receives.
How hypochondria is made up
The personality of the patient with hypochondria has certain common features and components:
- Obsession with the body: The hypochondriac constantly checks his body for signs of serious illness.
- Concern for health news: these people check news related to health issues looking for the link between these news and their own situations, imagining that any outbreak, epidemic or increase in the prevalence of a disease includes them.
- Verbalization of fictitious symptoms: in hypochondria, the topic of conversation always deals with diseases, studies to be carried out, the possibility of becoming ill and medical consequences.
- Anxiety state: While hypochondria is not a form of anxiety disorder, it is actually about anxious people. They live in a state of possible anticipation to the seriousness of a disease that they could suffer.
- Excessive medical visits: the hypochondriac makes many consultations with health professionals and tends to repeatedly change the treating doctor. What you are looking for is someone to diagnose what has already been self-diagnosed.
- Loss of social life: by turning his life on the disease, the hypochondriac patient separates himself from social activities and from the circles of family and friends. This has a negative impact because barriers are created for the approach and monitoring of their obsession.
Risk factors for hypochondria
Like all diseases, it is known that there are factors that make a person more predisposing to being a hypochondriac. These are the so-called risk factors. It does not mean that their presence ensures the existence of hypochondria, but they favor it.
One of the risk factors is having the bad experience of medical errors about oneself about close relatives. There remains, then, the feeling that the doctor can always make mistakes and miss a serious illness.
As we already mentioned, the family environment is also a risk factor. There are hypochondriac families in which, since childhood, the person receives messages about the severity of diseases and symptoms. They are also families that overreact to certain signs of common illnesses.
Both the family environment and the surrounding social environment can make people wrong beliefs about health. You can think that what is not serious is serious.
Treatment of hypochondria
To date, for hypochondria, the treatments that have been shown to be the most effective are cognitive-behavioral psychology therapies. Of course, as long as they are carried out by professionals trained in this area.
The goal of therapy is for the person to be able to free themselves from the anguish generated by the obsession with the disease, and at the same time lose the obsessive practices. You have to achieve a daily routine in which not everything revolves around the possibility of getting sick.
In general, cognitive-behavioral therapies propose tasks to be carried out by the patient. Among them is the limitation to medical consultations and the fact that he tries not to talk about illnesses.
Treatment can advance if there is collaboration from the person’s inner circle. Otherwise, it is very difficult to advance the objectives. The accompaniment of those close to you is practically the key to the success of the treatment.
