Dr. Rob Wilson
Dr. Rob Wilson is a renowned cognitive-behavioural therapist specialising in health anxiety, with over two decades of clinical experience. He co-authored Overcoming Health Anxiety ...
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Who are you, and what is your background?
My name is Rob Wilson. I'm a specialist cognitive behaviour therapist. I have a particular interest in obsessional problems like health anxiety, and I've been working in this field for about 30 years. It's really, really exciting to be here today to talk to you more about health anxiety. This is a subject which I think is often not well understood. It can be very severe and destructive. It can be very longstanding and persistent, and I'm really, really pleased to really be here and share with you some understanding of health anxiety, works a little bit of information on its treatment, and hopefully to help you see that there is a road to recovery, that you're not alone. There are plenty of other people out there with the problem. It doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you're failing to pull yourself together. It doesn't mean that you are crazy or neurotic. It just means that your brain, which is designed to keep you safe, has got a bit locked in to focus on a particular way of trying to keep you safe. It's trying a bit too hard. It's got stuck in some mechanisms like bodily checking and reassurance seeking, and things that are actually making the problem worse. But you can find the right path and you will be able to break free from it if you can learn how to do so. So please just ask a question.
What is health anxiety, and how might it manifest in different individuals?
So health anxiety is a form of obsessional problem, an anxiety disorder in which people become excessively preoccupied with either the fear that they've got something wrong with them, a health problem or fear that they may in fact get a particular illness. And this fear of illness causes significant levels of anxiety and distress. And it also usually involves many repetitive behaviours such as checking one's body or monitoring one's body for physical symptoms. And also means that people may pay particular attention to health related information, Googling things on the internet, and they may seek excessive reassurance. And some people, in fact, will avoid things like being seen by their doctor because we're afraid they may find out there's something wrong with them.
Is health anxiety connected to other conditions like OCD or general anxiety disorders?
So health anxiety is seen as a disorder related to OCD. That's how it's classified. Sometimes it's also referred to as hypochondriasis, which sometimes is seen as a bit of an older fashion term for health anxiety, but it's still used within the diagnostic literature. It's similar than OCD in the sense that it has obsessions, unwanted intrusive thoughts and people carry out compulsions. Things like checking behaviours, and there is often avoidance behaviour in both OCD and health anxiety. Health anxiety is also similar to generalised anxiety disorder, sometimes called GAD, in that it involves a lot of worry, but where generalised anxiety disorder can mean worrying about a range of things like family health, money work, these kinds of things. Typically health anxiety narrows down, of course, much more on particular health worries and indeed whether the worry being whether you've got a particular illness or whether you may go on to get a particular feared illness.