Psychotherapies for hypochondriasis

Hypochondriacal attitudes may reflect a general cognitive bias that is not limited to illness-related thoughts

“…Previous interventions focussed on illness-specific triggers and exposure to them (Thomson & Page, 2007;Visser & Bouman, 2001). The success of treating illness-related cues, however, may be limited when an illness-related bias was not the only cognitive disorder, and familiarisation to cues may hardly induce positive evaluation.…”

Symptoms of health anxiety in obsessive–compulsive disorder: Relationship with treatment outcome and metacognition

“…Furthermore, CBT attempts to eliminate behavioral responses considered as barriers to self-correction of faulty beliefs. Although CBT has shown superiority over waitlist controls it has not; demonstrated the same efficacy over non-specific therapies (Thomson & Page, 2007;Olatunji et al, 2014;Bouman, 2014), maintained gains after acute treatment phase (Olatunji et al, 2014), or demonstrated consistent active treatment ingredients or components of change (Bouman, 2014). Recently however, it has been suggested that psychopathology due to disturbance in metacognitions might necessitate a different understanding of health anxiety symptoms (Bailey & Wells, 2013).…”

Long-term consequences of severe health anxiety on sick leave in treated and untreated patients: Analysis alongside a randomised controlled trial

“…Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) reduces symptoms of illness worry in patients with severe HA (Bouman, 2014;Hedman et al, 2014;Thomson & Page, 2007;Tyrer et al, 2014). A study based on the same patient sample as the current one showed that a treatment approach derived from CBT, Acceptance and Commitment group Therapy (ACT-G), reduced illness worry and secondary outcomes in patients with HA compared to a waitlist control at 6-and 10-month follow-up (Eilenberg, Fink, Jensen, Rief, & Frostholm, 2015).…”