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Swedish study: Those who fear serious diseases, are likely to die earlier

2023-12-13 19:16:43Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Swedish study: Those who fear serious diseases, are likely to die earlier
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A Swedish study has revealed a paradox for people diagnosed with a high fear of serious illness: they tend to die earlier than people who are not hypervigilant about health concerns.

Hypochondriasis, also called illness anxiety disorder, is a rare condition with symptoms that go beyond normal health concerns. People with this disorder are unable to overcome their fears despite normal physical examinations and laboratory tests. Some may change doctors repeatedly. Others may avoid medical care but still fear serious illness.

"Many of us are mild hypochondriacs. But there are also people at the other end of the spectrum who live in a constant state of worry, suffering and brooding for fear that they may have a serious illness," said Dr. Jonathan E. Alpert of Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

People with the disorder are suffering, and "it's important to take it seriously and treat it," Alpert said. Treatment may include cognitive behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, education, and sometimes antidepressant medication.

Researchers found that people with this diagnosis have an increased risk of death from natural and unnatural causes, especially suicide. Chronic stress and its impact on the body may explain some of the changes, the authors wrote.

The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, addressed "a clear gap in the literature," said David Mataix-Cols of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the research. "We were lucky," he said, because the Swedish classification system for health statistics has a special code for hypochondriasis, allowing analysis of data for thousands of people over 24 years, 1997-2020.

Older research had suggested that the risk of suicide might be lower for people with the condition, but "our opinion, based on clinical experience, was that this would be incorrect," Mataix-Cols said. In the study, the risk of dying by suicide was four times higher for people with the diagnosis.

They studied 4,100 people diagnosed with hypochondriasis and compared them with 41,000 people similar in age, gender and county of residence. They used a metric called person-years, which counts the number of people and how long they were tracked.

Overall death rates were higher in people with hypochondriasis, 8.5 versus 5.5 per 1,000 person-years. People with the condition died younger than others, an average age of 70 versus 75. Their risk of death from circulatory and respiratory diseases was higher. Cancer was an exception; the risk of death was about the same.


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