Hypochondria Research Paper

The memoir Brain on Fire, written by author Susannah Cahalan, describes the journey she lived through with an undiagnosed disease. Susannah goes from being a New York Times journalist to being a person who couldn’t control herself and had to be strapped down to the hospital bed, in other words she was becoming psychotic. She did not choose to become the person she was in the hospital, someone who had no control over her body, someone who was lost. This got to a the point to where nurses no longer wanted to treat her and lost their patience because she was not being cooperative and was becoming more violent.The reason as to why she became this person was due to the misdiagnosing, doctors not taking time to do further test and family not thinking her symptoms were serious enough to have an actual disease. The signs were there but no one thought anything about it, as they thought she was over exaggerating. It wasn’t until she had her first seizure and the fact that she was hospitalized that her family, friends and even the doctors finally realized there was something wrong.

One recent study suggests that full-blown hypochondriasis is fairly rare, although lesser degrees of worry about illness are more common, affecting as many as 6% of people in a community sample. Hypochondria is an irregular anxiety about one's well being, particularly with an unjustified terror that one has a severe sickness. A lot of people worry about medical symptoms, but not everyone has hypochondria. Having an unidentified illness can cause anxiety. In this case, one should get a second opinion. This does not mean that said person is a hypochondriac. However, if you search your symptoms yourself, there is a high possibility that you can find something that matches. Minor illnesses, like the common cold, can match much more serious disorders.

Another reason you are probably not a hypochondriac is that when you realize it was all just your imagination, you see that you have many emotions that make you feel ashamed, demented, or dramatic. You realize that the chances of you contracting this disease are slim to none, you understand just how ridiculous the whole worrying scenario is. Reality will hit you in the face. All the obsession and anxiety was for nothing because the disease you thought you had is no where to be found in your body. I get the idea that I have a disease, and when I explain it to someone

Although it is every individual’s right to fully understand what their diagnosis is, explaining their diagnosis the right way is crucial. “A diagnosis doesn’t just exist in the clinical setting; our clients live with it. I’m not talking about the symptoms or history that lead to the diagnosis; I’m talking about the label. The diagnosis doesn’t just live in her file, all nice and neat and detached from real life. The diagnosis lives in her experience of herself” (Friedman,

This behavior is abnormal. As in Freud’s Anna O. case (Barlow, Durand, 2012) my neighbor have hysterical symptoms. When normal people are sick, they usually have one or two complains regarding to an illness and once this illness diagnosed, treatment process starts. There is no need to go doctors to doctors. Therefore my neighbor is not seeking to become healthy again, instead he or she seeking to get attention.

Evolutionarily, humans have been hunter gatherers, with a nomadic lifestyle and on a constant move. However, as farming civilization began to occur, it made way to a more stable lifestyle. As humans move towards a more fast paced, sedative, and more technologically advanced lifestyle, various diseases that were once somewhat preventable are on the rise. These may include many psychological ones like depression, anorexia, obesity, stress, situations and genetics. Due to these regions maladaptive behaviors also came into existence. One of the most interesting maladaptive behaviors to research is agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is a type of anxiety disorder. It is a type of behavior that inhibit a person's ability to adjust to a particular situation.

"This is just a time for me to emotionally check out for a second and take care of myself and come back in 30 days as the best 30-year-old woman I can be," this was said by LeAnn Rimes, a country artist who has won two Grammy’s, three Academy of Country Music awards, a Country Music Award, and four Billboard music awards, and more. Rimes recently entered a 30-day-in-patient treatment facility to cope with anxiety and stress. Anyone who listens to country music and enjoys LeAnn Rimes would most likely never guess she would be suffering from any type of disorder. It’s interesting to see that even celebrities who are known to stand up on stage in front of thousands of people to perform still develop different types of anxiety. In this paper, I

In conclusion, hypochondria, despite its’ lighthearted reputation, should not be taken less seriously than any other mental illness. Hypochondria is just as real as any other disease, affecting about nine percent of the population. Both women and men can contract it, and age has no influence. Everyone is at risk; the most effective way of combating hypochondria is education. Educating yourself and others about this illness could possibly prevent hypochondria from

The human body contains blood and fluid compounds and elements like chloride, phosphate, potassium, calcium, sodium, and magnesium known as electrolytes that occur naturally to control important physiologic functions. When the body levels of electrolytes are low (hypo) or high (hyper) it results in electrolyte disorder. Depending on the affected electrolyte(s), when body electrolytes are hyper (high) or hypo(low) it leads to electrolyte disorder, which in turn disrupts blood ionized salts balance ( Buttaro, et al., 2017). For instance, disruption of chloride leads to either hyperchloremia or hypochloremia, calcium (hypercalcemia or hypocalcemia ), Potassium (hyperkalemia or hypokalemia), Magnesium disruption

In fact, psychological problems in this regard assume a physical form and emerge as various disorders such as pain disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, hypochondriasis, and somatoform disorders (Kring et al, 2007). Hypochondriasis is a disorder which is determined based on a meaningful phobia of catching a serious illness or thinking of catching it due to erroneous interpretation of one or more of physical symptoms. Mental preoccupation with illness, despite frequent reassurances and accurate medical evaluations, continues for at least six months and creates significant anxiety and insolvency in various social and professional fields and other areas (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).

To be a productive, working citizen certain things are required of you. One you show up to work and two you do the job right. Attendance has always been an Achilles heel to us Manic-depressives. Depression takes you normal stamina and minimize it one-hundred-fold and it also has the same effect on motivation. You can surely guess what happens when you combined someone with low motivation and low energy. What comes out the other end is someone who is going to do inadequate work or no work at all. The lack of motivation and stamina is not from laziness either depression is a chemical imbalance of the brain. The chemicals being serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine primarily. The lack of or abundance of these chemicals can be destructive to oneself.

Understand that hypochondria creates very real distress. Hypochondria is a mental disorder (just like depression or OCD) and a real illness. Even if the illness they think they have is not real, their stress and duress are very real to them. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200912/hypochondria-the-impossible-illness) Severe illness seems like a serious possibility to your loved one, and bland reassurances won't make it go away.

Neurotic illnesses are mostly associated with experiences that are described as “normal”. By associating this type of illness with the word normal, what is meant is that neurotic disorders are that they are more common than that of which psychotic are. They can be any type of mental imbalance that causes grief or distress and to a certain extent; these disorders do not interfere in everyday life as psychotic disorders do. Common symptoms of this type of mental health problem can be depressive behaviour, anxiety or stress. Internally, within neurotic disorders there are higher and lower levels of severity in terms of the way people are affecting ranging from, for example, nausea at the lower levels to excessive vomiting at the higher levels as a result of anxiety or stress (Moore, 1978). World Health Organisation (1946) described mental health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

My family has always been boisterous and argumentative, speaking so quickly and loudly that there has always existed the struggle to understand them; but never any difficulty to hear them. When whispers arise, or the tone over the phone to Peru goes low and quiet, something is very wrong. Excuses were made that the reason my uncle goes to church so late at night is due to his piousness and not abnormal sleeplessness, his exaggerated worry and nervousness were just him being cautious, his paranoia concerning even the most trivial daily event was called a quirk of his personality, anything relative to a disorder was shut down completely. It was not until my uncle’s physical condition was so severely impacted that he was taken to a private doctor for an evaluation. Mental illness is still very stigmatized in many parts of the world, and even anxiety disorders, of which many people suffer, are judged and condemned in the workplace and society of Peru.

The difference between social anxiety disorder and other disorders is that a person is capable of enjoying themselves. This is because they are not impacted as severely physically since their fear is only stimulated in the event that they will have to be