Health anxiety (hypochondria)
In the DSM-5, what used to be called hypochondria was split into two diagnoses: Illness Anxiety Disorder (worry about having a serious disease, with few or no physical symptoms) and Somatic Symptom Disorder (excessive distress over physical symptoms that are actually present). Both involve disproportionate worry about health.
Health anxiety involves catastrophic interpretation of normal physical sensations, excessive seeking of medical reassurance, compulsive body checking, and extensive symptom research online. It is maintained by the same mechanisms as OCD — checking and reassurance-seeking provide brief relief but reinforce the cycle.
Treatment (CBT) focuses on reducing checking and reassurance-seeking behaviors, and on reframing the interpretation of normal physical sensations.
💡 Practical example
Every time Carla gets a headache, she searches her symptoms online, always finding a tumor or aneurysm as a possibility, calls her doctor, gets tests done, receives a normal result, and feels at ease for a few days — and when the next symptom appears, the cycle starts all over again.
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