Treating Health Anxiety

Grounded in current theory and treatment research, this highly practical book presents a comprehensive framework for assessing and treating health anxiety, including full-blown and milder (subclinical) forms of hypochondriasis. The current state of knowledge about these prevalent and costly problems is reviewed, and assessment methods and empirically supported treatments described. Clear, step-by-step recommendations are provided for engaging patients or clients, implementing carefully planned cognitive and behavioral interventions, and troubleshooting potential pitfalls. Important advances in pharmacotherapy for persons with health anxiety disorders are also discussed. Enhancing the utility of this clinician- and student-friendly resource are numerous case examples and sample dialogues, quick-reference tables and boxed material, and over 20 reproducible handouts and assessment forms.

Contemporary culture includes a high awareness of personal and global health hazards. Many people may feel some anxiety in this regard, but some develop an unbearable sense of dread that prevents them from functioning. Treating Health Anxiety gives prescribing and non-prescribing clinicians, as well as the counselors and social workers who encounter the problem, the tools to reduce both the fears and the medical costs that so often accompany them.

Fully updated edition of the bestselling self-help book, now recommended on the national Books on Prescription scheme. This ever-popular guide offers a self-help programme, written by one of the UK's leading authorities on anxiety and based on CBT, for those suffering from anxiety problems. A whole range of anxieties and fears are explained, from panic attacks and phobias to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and generalised anxiety. It includes an introduction to the nature of anxiety and stress and a complete self-help programme with monitoring sheets based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The following websites may offer useful further information on anxiety disorders: www.social-anxiety.org.uk www.stress.org.uk www.triumphoverphobia.com

Between 25% and 50% of visits to primary care clinics are for somatic complaints with no identifiable organic pathology. While most people are reassured when told they are not ill, a certain percentage is convinced the doctor has missed something serious. For centuries, hypochondriasis and persistent somatic complaints have baffled physicians and mental health professionals alike. Recent decades, however, have seen advances in the understanding and treatment of this problem when it is considered a form of "health anxiety." In this highly practical and accessible book, Jonathan Abramowitz and Autumn Braddock present a model of health anxiety and hypochondriasis grounded in the most up-to-date clinical science and that incorporates physiological, cognitive, and behavioral processes. They also offer a step-by-step guide to assessment, conceptualization, and psychological treatment that is derived from this model and integrates strategies for psychoeducation, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy (exposure and response prevention), and dealing with resistance to treatment. The book is packed with illustrative clinical examples and therapist-patient dialogues. Sample forms and handouts are also provided. This volume, which also addresses motivational problems and other common obstacles in treating individuals with health anxiety, is an essential resource for students and researchers in behavioral medicine and health psychology, and for anyone working with patients in hospitals, primary care settings, academic medical centers, and freestanding mental health clinics.

In the recently updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the diagnostic concept of hypochondriasis was eliminated and replaced by somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder. Hypochondriasis and Health Anxiety: A Guide for Clinicians, edited by Vladan Starcevic and Russell Noyes and written by prominent clinicians and researchers in the field, addresses current issues in recognizing, understanding, and treating hypochondriasis. Using a pragmatic approach, it offers a wealth of clinically useful information. The book also provides a critical review of the underlying conceptual and treatment issues, addressing varying perspectives and synthesizing the current research. Specific topics the text covers include: clinical manifestations, diagnostic and conceptual issues, classification, relationships with other disorders, assessment, epidemiology, economic aspects, course, outcome and treatment. Additionally, the book discusses patient-physician relationship in the context of hypochondriasis and health anxiety and presents cognitive, behavioral, interpersonal and psychodynamic models and treatments. The authors also address the neurobiological underpinnings of hypochondriasis and health anxiety and pharmacological treatment approaches. Based on the extensive clinical experience of its authors, there are numerous case illustrations and practical examples of how to assess, understand and manage individuals presenting with disease preoccupations, health anxiety and/or beliefs that they are seriously ill. It approaches its subject from various perspectives and is a work of integration and critical thinking about an area often shrouded in controversy.

The Clinician's Guide to Treating Health Anxiety: Diagnosis, Mechanisms, and Effective Treatment provides mental health professionals with methods to better identify patients with health anxiety, the basic skills to manage it, and ways to successfully adapt cognitive behavioral therapy to treat it. The book features structured diagnostic instruments that can be used for assessment, while also underscoring the importance of conducting a comprehensive functional analysis of the patient’s problems. Sections cover refinements in assessment and treatment methods and synthesize existing literature on etiology and maintenance mechanisms. Users will find an in-depth look at who develops health anxiety, what the behavioral and cognitive mechanisms that contribute to it are, why it persists in patients, and how it can be treated. Provides clinicians with tools to better identify, manage and treat health anxiety Outlines a step-by-step behavioral treatment program Looks at the similarities and differences between health anxiety and other anxiety disorders Reviews self-report instruments that can be used to measure health anxiety on a dimensional scale Includes information about recent diagnostic changes according to DSM-5

It’s time to outsmart your worry and anxiety. Drawing on the same cutting-edge psychology presented in author David Carbonell’s The Worry Trick, this irreverent, on-the-go guide offers ten powerful "counter-intuitive" strategies to help you put worry in its place—anytime, anywhere. Anxiety is a powerful force. It makes us question our decisions and ourselves, worry about the future, and it fills our days with dread and emotional turbulence. But what if we understood that anxiety is merely a trick of the mind, trying to convince us we’re in danger? Anxiety is like a magician behind the curtain, playing subtle tricks on us to convince us that we're in danger when we’re not. When we understand this, we can observe our anxious feelings with some distance. Based on the author’s popular book, The Worry Trick, this helpful and humorous guide identifies the “trick” of chronic anxiety, and provides the ten most powerful techniques based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you respond differently to panic, anxiety, worry, and phobias. Once you learn to respond differently to the worry trick, you’ll be able to break the cycle of chronic anxiety for good. Instead of trying to “manage” your anxiety or push anxious thoughts away—techniques that you’ve probably already discovered don’t work—the ten powerful strategies outlined in this guide will empower you to actually change how you respond to worry and anxiety, so you can get your life back!

Social anxiety disorder is persistent fear of (or anxiety about) one or more social situations that is out of proportion to the actual threat posed by the situation and can be severely detrimental to quality of life. Only a minority of people with social anxiety disorder receive help. Effective treatments do exist and this book aims to increase identification and assessment to encourage more people to access interventions. Covers adults, children and young people and compares the effects of pharmacological and psychological interventions. Commissioned by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). The CD-ROM contains all of the evidence on which the recommendations are based, presented as profile tables (that analyse quality of data) and forest plots (plus, info on using/interpreting forest plots). This material is not available in print anywhere else.

Many of us have a tendency to worry unnecessarily about our health. For some the anxiety becomes chronic, and they may spend many hours checking for symptoms, seeking reassurance from others, surfing the internet for information about different diseases, or repeatedly visiting the doctor. It is distressing for them and for everyone around them. In fact, health anxiety can be very successfully treated with cognitive behavioral therapy - the approach taken in this self - help guide. Using a structured, step - by - step approach the authors explain how the problem develops, how to recognize what feeds it and how to develop effective methods of dealing with it.

This manual attempts to provide simple, adequate and evidence-based information to health care professionals in primary health care especially in low- and middle-income countries to be able to provide pharmacological treatment to persons with mental disorders. The manual contains basic principles of prescribing followed by chapters on medicines used in psychotic disorders; depressive disorders; bipolar disorders; generalized anxiety and sleep disorders; obsessive compulsive disorders and panic attacks; and alcohol and opioid dependence. The annexes provide information on evidence retrieval, assessment and synthesis and the peer view process.