Effective Therapy for Hypochondriacs
Wednesday March 24, 2004
A new study of almost 200 patients diagnosed with hypochondria found that cognitive behavioral psychotherapy helped many of them. Patients with this disorder are convinced that they suffer from a number of physical illnesses when they really do not.
In this study 102 patients with hypochondria were assigned to receive cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and 85 to get routine medical care. Around 1/4 of the patients in psychotherapy dropped out, but among those who completed the 6 therapy sessions, 57 percent showed improvement in symptoms and quality of life after one year. This is compared with only 32 percent of the patients in the comparison group who reported such improvement.
Here is an AP summary
Here is a summary from JAMA
In this study 102 patients with hypochondria were assigned to receive cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and 85 to get routine medical care. Around 1/4 of the patients in psychotherapy dropped out, but among those who completed the 6 therapy sessions, 57 percent showed improvement in symptoms and quality of life after one year. This is compared with only 32 percent of the patients in the comparison group who reported such improvement.
Here is an AP summary
Here is a summary from JAMA