Health anxiety

What is health anxiety?

If you experience health anxiety (sometimes referred to as hypochondria), it means you are afraid of being or becoming seriously ill. You spend so much time worrying about this, that it starts to take over your life. Each time you feel something in your body, you are convinced it is a sign of serious illness. This can cause mood problems, like feelings of depression. Even if your doctor or others assure you that nothing is wrong, you remain anxious. Health anxiety starts to take up more and more of your time, interfering with your daily life, your work, social relationships, and activities.

The purpose of this module is for the patient to practice skills that can help overcome health anxiety.

What is this module about?

This module aims to:

• Support patients that have health anxiety;
• Motivate patients to break the vicious cycle of anxiety;
• Give exercises that help provide insight into the patient’s unhelpful thoughts and thinking traps;
• Give tools to practice thinking in more helpful ways;
• Contribute to preventing relapse.

For whom is this module suitable?

The module is suitable for patients who experience health anxiety. As a therapist, you can use the module for blended therapy, alternating face to face sessions with online sessions. You can can monitor the patient’s progress through the sessions and diary entries and provide feedback. As a therapist, you can also tailor the module to your patient’s individual needs: for instance, by making a session unguided or adding or removing (optional) sessions.

What is the module based on?

The content of the module has been put together during an extensive development process and is based on relevant literature as well as the knowledge and experience of practitioners and patients.

Which diaries are part of this module?

This module includes two diaries:

• In the health anxiety diary, the patient monitors situations in which they experience health anxiety. The patient answers a number of questions regarding what made them anxious (bodily sensation, situation or other experience), level of anxiety, thoughts, behaviour and the effect of their behaviour. By monitoring this, the patient gains insight and may notice changes throughout the module.
• With the thought record diary, the patient can challenge their unhelpful, negative thoughts step by step.

Your feedback is welcome!

Minddistrict is eager to hear your opinion on the ‘Health anxiety’ module. If you have any feedback, questions or tips, please send them to info@minddistrict.com. We look forward to hearing from you!