Health anxiety
CBT for health anxiety
Over the past 20 years, health anxiety has been accepted as a disorder in which the central feature is a persistent fear by the sufferer that he/she has a serious physical illness, despite medical reassurances that there is nothing medically wrong. It used to be accepted that there was no treatment for severe health anxiety; (also known as hypochondriasis). However, there are now published reports of successful cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) for this distressing condition. Health anxiety is now routinely treated successfully by trained cognitive behavioural therapists.