Chapter 23
Severe Health Anxiety in the Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders
Erik Hedman,
Erland Axelsson,
Erik Hedman
Search for more papers by this authorErland Axelsson
Search for more papers by this authorErik Hedman,
Erland Axelsson,
Erik Hedman
Search for more papers by this authorErland Axelsson
Search for more papers by this authorBook Editor(s):Dean McKay,
Jonathan S. Abramowitz,
Eric A. Storch,
Dean McKay
Search for more papers by this authorJonathan S. Abramowitz
Search for more papers by this authorEric A. Storch
Search for more papers by this authorSummary
This chapter considers the health anxiety, the fear of having or acquiring a serious illness. This is because health anxiety is arguably the dominating, and most studied, characteristic of both the DSM-5 somatic symptom and related disorders and the DSM-IV somatoform disorders. The chapter provides an overview of empirically supported components in the treatment of severe health anxiety, namely psychoeducation, cognitive restructuring techniques, exposure and response prevention, mindfulness training, and acceptance-based strategies. An important part of psychoeducation is to inform the patient about how safety behaviors and selective attention to threatening information can maintain health anxiety by preventing the patient from learning that feared events are improbable. A central part of the cognitive behavioral model of health anxiety is that the affected person's anxiety is a function of faulty appraisals of bodily sensations and external events. The purpose of behavioral experiments is to investigate the validity of automatic thoughts by testing them empirically.
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