Hypochondria is a human psychopathological condition that manifests itself in constant and continuous concern and worry about one’s health. A person is afraid of getting sick with some disease, perceives his sensations as unpleasant or threatening his normal functioning.
Often hypochondriacs diagnose themselves and believe that they suffer from some incurable pathology. In other words, a person with hypochondria turns into a kind of machine that records all his sensations and interprets them into diseases and symptoms.
Causes of hypochondria
There are many hypotheses and assumptions about the causes of hypochondria. But researchers are unanimous on one thing: hypochondria occurs against the background of a depressive disorder. Scientists have shown that patients suffering from depression experience a significant increase in any complaints for which there is no physical reason.
Hypochondria also contributes to:
- disturbances in the functioning of the cerebral cortex; - distorted perception by the cortex of impulses from internal organs; — initial manifestations of delusional disorders; - a disturbance between the work of the autonomic nervous system (responsible for the autonomous functioning of organs) and the cortex.
Clinic
The symptoms of cancerophobia are extremely varied. It can look like a reactive state (the easiest option), persistent neurosis and even psychosis with hallucinatory-delusional disorders.
Cancerophobia neurosis can be expressed to varying degrees (according to an interview with Alexander Methodovsky, deputy chief physician for medical work at the St. Petersburg City Clinical Oncology Center; AiF, 2010):
- A person is afraid of cancer, but does not take any action. Although the thought of a possible illness often arises in him, he is able to pull himself together and not subject his entire life to diagnostic searches.
- The person is afraid of cancer and is constantly being examined. Although he understands that his suspicions are not supported by anything, he cannot cope with them. He constantly imagines what will happen when he dies, feels sorry for his children and other relatives, is anxious, and suffers from insomnia.
- A person is afraid of cancer, is constantly examined, takes “preventive” medications, eats kilograms of cauliflower and pineapples, because he read that they prevent the occurrence of malignant diseases, and generally adheres fanatically to a healthy lifestyle.
- A man is sure that he has cancer, which doctors simply cannot detect, and no one understands his torment and suffering. People often hate them because they don't have cancer and don't know what it's like. Perhaps he is convinced that his tumor was found a long time ago, but is being hidden.
- There is another option. A person is so afraid of discovering a tumor that he deliberately avoids going to the doctor and undergoing examinations aimed at identifying the tumor. Essentially, this is an animal reaction at the level of instinct - to hide or run away when danger arises. Sometimes the fear of cancer is so great that people do not go to the doctor even if they observe frightening symptoms.
Symptoms, complaints and course of the disease
Every practicing doctor has encountered hypochondriacs in his practice. People with this pathology often present all sorts of complaints, look for many diseases, and do many additional examinations. However, their results are usually absolutely normal.
Hypochondria is divided into 3 types:
1. Obsessive. 2. Super valuable. 3. Delusional.
Patients with the obsessive form are anxious and suspicious, overly concerned about the state of their health, and constantly analyze all the processes occurring in the body. An attack of hypochondria can be triggered by viewing medical advertisements or an ambiguous phrase from a doctor. Patients with the overvalued form have similar symptoms, but they are characterized by an acute psycho-emotional reaction to the slightest physical discomfort (for example, a runny nose). The most complex and severe form of hypochondria is delusional.
It is characterized by: confidence in the presence of an incurable disease, attempts to dissuade are interpreted as “even the doctors have given up on me,” there are attempts to commit suicide, as well as depression, delusions and hallucinations.
Etiology
The current understanding of malignant tumors in society looks something like this:
- Cancer is always death.
- Cancer appears out of nowhere, it is impossible to prevent it, the fight against it is futile.
- The treatment offered by modern medicine - surgical methods, chemotherapy, radiation therapy - is always very difficult to tolerate, accompanied by unpleasant side effects and rarely leads to recovery.
- All other diseases are curable. At least they do not inevitably lead to death.
Scientific information about the achievements of modern oncology is inaccessible to the population, and even uninteresting. But on the shelves of bookstores and on the Internet, at the disposal of those interested, there are a lot of opuses on this issue. Their authors know why cancer occurs and how to treat it, thereby hinting that doctors are powerless here and cannot do anything. There is a lot of information available to patients about cancer, but little of it corresponds to current scientific understanding. As a result, people do not know basic things about cancer, and the irrationality of fear has become so widespread that a cancer patient is perceived by others almost as a leper. I personally have repeatedly encountered the misconception that cancer is contagious.
The ubiquitous advertising of “unique” preparations made from various cartilages and roots, which are supposedly capable of curing both cancer and other diseases, also contributes to the spread of cancerophobia. Its recipients subconsciously form the idea that traditional medicine is not able to cope with cancer. It is also widely believed that in fact there is a universal cure for cancer, but doctors and pharmacists, fearing a decrease in their income, hide it. The accepted approach to informing patients - hiding the diagnosis until the last minute and maintaining their hope for recovery - also contributes to worsening the atmosphere of cancerophobia in society. Thanks to him, everyone knows about thousands of deaths, but at the same time they do not know about millions of cures.
By the way, in 2005, WHO recognized that silence about cancer is harmful, and fears that medical education of the population can lead to the development of cancerophobia are unfounded.
The current state of oncology is such that it can help a small number of lucky people whose tumor was detected at an early stage. Alas, cancer often manifests itself when the game is already obviously lost, and it is impossible to cure the sick person. Therefore, the main problem of modern oncology is the timely diagnosis of tumor diseases.
Cancer and cancerophobia
Cancer
- one of the severe forms of cancer. It has a malignant course and a poor prognosis if the disease is detected late. One of the leading causes of death in old age. According to statistics, the incidence of oncological diseases and cancer in particular in people suffering from cancerophobia is several times lower than in the general population.
This can be explained by several reasons
Firstly, people prone to phobias are usually physically healthy people and therefore diseases of internal organs are observed less frequently in them.
Secondly, due to fear for their health, they are distinguished by frequent (more than necessary) visits to doctors, examinations and tests, and therefore all their existing diseases are detected at an early stage, which allows for timely application of medical measures.
Thirdly, carcinophobes, due to their tendency to causeless anxiety, have well-developed vegetative centers that promote good capillary blood flow and, accordingly, high endurance of the body, which also determines good physical health.
How to protect yourself from cancer?
The most universal and proven method is medical examination. Regular and preventive observation by a doctor allows you to identify any disease in the early stages, cancer - at the stage of a precancerous condition. When the disease is just beginning, it is easier to cope with it.
For cancer patients, this rule becomes an obsession. They are ready, on their own initiative, to take tests for tumor markers (blood indicators indicating cancer) an infinite number of times, undergo examinations and consultations with oncologists.
How to get rid of the fear of getting cancer?
In mild cases, a consultation with a doctor is sufficient, at which it is enough to convince the patient that he does not have cancer or even a predisposition to it. It is very important if the doctor points out high anxiety and teaches how to cope with this anxiety.
Diagnosis and treatment
Any obsessive fear, including cancer phobia, deprives a person of the opportunity to live fully and puts him in constant dependence on existing fears. In addition, being under constant stress is of little benefit to health and actually increases the risk of getting not an imaginary, but a very real disease. A classic example is a stress-related disease such as gastric ulcer. And long-term stomach ulcers, as is known, can become malignant. So is cancerophobia treatable and how to get rid of it?
Talking about treatments for cancer fear in general is quite difficult. Thus, reactive syndrome can be dealt with using psychotherapy methods, sometimes with the addition of antidepressants or sedatives, and severe cases require hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital. However, a psychotherapist in our reality is an exotic figure, and few people will go to a psychiatrist of their own free will. Of course, first of all, cancerophobes turn to their local therapist with their fears.
Patients who have suffered from this disorder for several days are usually well known by doctors and are frequent visitors to the clinic. If such a patient comes to the appointment for the first time, the idea of a diagnosis may be prompted by an emotionally expressed statement about the presence of a malignant neoplasm.
It is better to treat a patient with such fear carefully. Sometimes complaints are actually caused by the presence of a tumor, so first of all you need to make sure that the patient’s suspicions are unfounded. A clear understanding of the sequence and scope of the examination aimed at excluding cancer pathology in organs and systems of the body will help.
In relation to patients who have undergone a course of radical treatment for a malignant neoplasm, even a non-oncologist in general should have an idea of the terms of follow-up. If there is a pain syndrome, it is necessary to find out its nature - whether the pain is associated with any disease or is it somatized depression. What to do if, during the examination, no evidence of the presence of a malignant neoplasm was obtained, but the patient is still convinced that he has cancer and continues to harass himself, and at the same time the doctor? Psychotherapists in the treatment of phobias use the techniques of rational (information, persuasion) and suggestive (suggestion to patients in a state of hypnosis) psychotherapy. Of course, suggestive psychotherapy should be carried out by specialists. The local doctor has methods of persuasion in his arsenal. Firstly, it is possible to documentally prove to the patient that he does not have cancer. If there are no medical indications for any specific examinations within the framework of compulsory medical insurance, the patient can have them performed at his own expense. The cost of the issue, as a rule, does not stop the cancerophobe. He will donate blood for all existing tumor markers and do a computed tomography scan of the whole body to make sure everything is normal.
Secondly, when communicating with such a patient, it is necessary to constantly convey the idea that in our time an oncological diagnosis is not a death sentence, cancer is a serious disease, but at the present stage it is curable. Positive examples work well - stories about those who had cancer, but were cured.
It makes sense to ask the patient about his professional and family history. As a rule, it turns out that everything is not very good there. And, along with recommending taking antidepressants, visiting a psychotherapist and personal growth courses, you can try to get the patient to think about what is really bothering him (problems in family life, lack of fulfillment in his profession, etc.) and what he is afraid to admit himself. to yourself. Of course, this will not cure a carcinophobe instantly, but it can point in the right direction.
If a person believes that following certain rules and recommendations will help him avoid cancer, there is no need to convince him otherwise. Constant actions that are monotonous and obligatory replace the obsession of the phobia. Careful adherence to a diet, a daily jog, a shower in the morning, even reading the evening prayer and going to church can calm him down and create the illusion that he is in control of the situation.
In addition, those suffering from cancer phobia should be oriented not towards the probable future, but towards the present and be encouraged to live for today. There is even some benefit that can be derived from cancerophobia. Sufferers are usually examined from head to toe. They continuously donate blood for tumor markers, do a variety of X-ray examinations, ultrasound, computed tomography and nuclear MRI of all areas of the body. Such a patient does not need to be referred for examinations; he already has all the latest results on hand. If, despite a comprehensive examination, the patient’s doubts cannot be dispelled, and he is still convinced that he has cancer, he can be sent to oncologists. After all, the cancer clinic is the final authority in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. And if this stage has already been passed, all that remains is to recommend a course of treatment with a psychotherapist.
Nosophobia - fear of getting sick
As we said earlier, nosophobia is an obsessive, anxious idea of getting sick with a specific disease, such as coronavirus, cancer, AIDS, or any other disease in general. Those who suffer from this phobia develop an exaggerated fear of the disease and are often depressingly impressed by specific cases of the disease.
Here are some of the symptoms of nosophobia:
- Exaggerated constant nervousness before any minor physical sign. The slightest deviation is considered a symptom.
- A person takes extreme measures to avoid contact with germs and viruses.
- Frequent and repeated visits to different doctors, although they may avoid them as a possible source of infection.
- There is a strong worry that the doctor will confirm their fears that they are suffering from a terrible disease and make a diagnosis.
Obsessive fears of infections and diseases become dominant and manifest themselves at the cognitive level (constant thinking about it). There are also emotional symptoms, such as experiencing dysphoric mood due to intense terror, and behavioral symptoms, such as inappropriate medical consultations.
What kind of phobia is this?
Nosophobia is a condition in which a person experiences constant anxiety about the possible development of a particular disease. As a rule, the object of fear is a specific disease, but in some cases the patient may experience fear of several diseases at once. Most often, nosophobes “choose” dangerous diseases for themselves that are difficult to treat and can lead to disability or death - this disorder goes “hand in hand” with another fear - the fear of death.
Ministry of Health warns: fear is harmful to your health
It turns out that by worrying about our health, we only worsen our already poor health.
However, this is not a reason to relax and give up on your condition. On the contrary, short-term fear is even useful: fear keeps us from taking unnecessary risks and facing danger. In a state of stress, human memory works better, the sense of smell, vision and hearing become more acute, and all the forces of the body are mobilized. Only a long stay in a depressed state is harmful to our body.
The reaction to danger occurs instantly. Neural detectors sense danger and transmit a signal to the brain. The hypothalamus processes information, and the brain quickly gives the command: fight, run, pull your hand away from the fire, etc. In a state of stress, our body releases adrenaline, which is converted by muscles into energy. If it is not used up, tremor of the limbs and lips begins, and then it spreads to the whole body. Fear has a bad effect on all organs of our body and even contributes to the appearance of cholesterol plaques in blood vessels.
Fear is a disease that relaxes the soul, just as a physical illness relaxes the body. (c) Daniel Defoe
Fear, stress and depression contribute to the development of various diseases: ulcers, cancer, and the formation of metastases. Fear suppresses the immune system; a person who is constantly afraid often gets sick: either a cold, or flu, or ARVI.
Where does pathophobia come from?
Due to the characteristics of a person’s psychotype, his early childhood experiences and a certain amount of psychological immaturity, fears of contracting some disease may arise. Usually these are people with an anxious accentuation of character, prone to rapid asthenia and indecisiveness. During preschool age, they may have had the experience of emergency hospitalization due to injury or serious physical condition, as well as being raised by parents prone to excessive anxiety and overprotection. Such childhood traumas, superimposed on parental overprotection, cemented in the child’s memory the emotional reactions of adults to their state of health. And over time, they became components of the character of an adult.
When they talk about pathophobia, most often we are talking about fatal infections, cancer and diseases that disfigure the appearance and psyche of the patient. This includes the fear of being bitten and getting rabies, cancerophobia, fear of dirt, germs and infection, fear of going crazy, getting heart disease and some others.
Why am I a hypochondriac
Obsessive fears can be easily dissuaded. Hypochondriacs are diligent people and gladly listen to all the recommendations of people they consider competent. Therefore, some fears may go away, others may come, replacing each other. Nowadays, this is well facilitated by the Internet, from where anxious people get “useful” information, often completely far from reality, about a wide variety of ailments.
Over time, the tendency to phobic reactions is consolidated, acquiring an obsessive neurotic character.
