A large Swedish study has revealed discrepancies regarding people diagnosed with excessive fear of serious illness. They tend to die sooner than people who are not hyper-vigilant about health concerns.
Hypochondriasis, now called illness anxiety disorder, is a rare condition with symptoms that go beyond your average health concerns. People with this disorder are unable to get rid of their fears despite routine physical and laboratory tests. Some people change doctors many times. Some people may avoid medical care.
“Many of us are mildly hypochondriacs, but at the other end of the spectrum, we live with constant worry, suffering, and rumination that we have a serious illness,” says Monte, New York. said Dr. Jonathan E. Alpert of Fiore Medical Center.
People with the disorder suffer, and “it's important that we take this disorder seriously and treat it,” said Alpert, who was not involved in the new study. Treatment may include cognitive behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, education, and sometimes antidepressants.
Researchers found that people with this diagnosis were at increased risk of death from both natural and unnatural causes, especially suicide. Chronic stress and its effects on the body may explain some of the difference, the authors write.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, addressed a “clear gap in the literature,” said study leader David Mataiks-Kols of Sweden's Karolinska Institutet. “We were lucky,” he said. The Swedish disease classification system has a separate code for hypochondriasis, which made it possible to analyze data on thousands of people over a 24-year period from 1997 to 2020.
Older studies suggested that people with the disease may have a low risk of suicide, but “our hunch, based on clinical experience, was that this was incorrect,” Mataix-Kols said. said. In this study, people with the diagnosis had a four times higher risk of dying by suicide.
They studied 4,100 people diagnosed with hypochondria and matched them with 41,000 people of similar age, gender, and location. They used a measure called person-years, which represents the number of people and the length of follow-up.
Overall mortality was higher in hypochondriacs: 8.5 versus 5.5 per 1,000 person-years. People with the disease died younger than others, with an average age of 70 versus 75. The risk of death from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases was higher. Cancer was the exception. The risk of death was about the same.
Dr. Alpert, who heads the American Psychiatric Association's research council, said it's important to refer patients with extreme anxiety to a mental health professional. Patients may feel condemned for imagining their symptoms and may feel offended.
“It takes a lot of respect and consideration to tell patients that this is a symptom in itself, and that it has a name,” Alpert says. “And fortunately, there are good treatments.”
