Article October 29, 2012 ISSUE

Health anxiety: Help for the well-but-worried

Russ Gerber

Internet sites and online message boards are buzzing with people who despairingly refuse to believe they are well even though a physician has given them a clean bill of health. There’s Jimmy, for example, who confessed: “I have no reason to believe I have a particular ailment, and against all reason and logic I just feel like I have it.”

He knows about health anxiety (also called hypochondria) but his medical diagnosis hasn’t helped. Jimmy is still haunted by what-ifs and panic attacks. He ends his comments: “I have no symptoms or risk factors, just an irrational fear that I can’t control.”