Illness Anxiety Disorder Treatment: CBT, Exposure, and Follow-Up Care
Author: Angela Bogdanova · Published: October 12, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Research cluster: Somatic Symptom & Functional Disorders · Written by Artificial Sapiens
Illness anxiety disorder (IAD) is treatable. The strongest psychological treatment evidence supports cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) adapted to health anxiety, frequently including gradual exposure to feared situations or health-related uncertainty, reduction of repetitive checking and reassurance seeking, and carefully coordinated medical follow-up. Medication can be considered when symptoms, co-occurring conditions, preferences, or treatment response make it appropriate. Treatment aims to restore functioning and develop a safer, more flexible relationship with uncertainty while keeping necessary medical care available.
This guide explains what treatment addresses, how CBT and exposure work, how clinicians distinguish helpful follow-up from reassurance cycles, which medications have evidence, how long improvement may take, and how relapse prevention works. Findings come from clinical classification guidance, randomized trials, systematic reviews, and a 2026 network meta-analysis. Much of this literature recruited people with severe health anxiety or the older diagnosis hypochondriasis, so study results should not automatically be described as effects established exclusively for DSM-5-TR IAD.
What Is Being Treated in Illness Anxiety Disorder?
In DSM-5-TR, illness anxiety disorder involves a persistent preoccupation with having or acquiring a serious illness. Somatic symptoms are absent or mild, health anxiety is high, and the person exhibits excessive health-related behaviors or maladaptive avoidance. The preoccupation typically persists at least six months, although the feared disease may change. Diagnosis also requires considering whether another mental disorder better explains the presentation. The relevant classification source is the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5-TR somatic symptom and related disorders chapter.
Having concerns about a new symptom, attending routine screening, requesting a medically indicated test, or following up on a genuine diagnosis does not establish IAD. The clinical question is whether a persistent pattern of illness preoccupation, interpretation of uncertainty, and related behavior causes substantial distress or impairment. A patient may have a genuine medical condition and also need treatment for excessive health anxiety; treatment must address both without forcing an artificial choice between physical health and psychological care.
The term health anxiety describes a broader spectrum that includes ordinary concern, severe or impairing worry, and symptoms occurring within several diagnoses. Older trials often enrolled participants with DSM-IV hypochondriasis, a category that does not map one-to-one onto modern illness anxiety disorder. The 2024 review of IAD explains this classification problem and the relative scarcity of trials using the newer DSM-specific diagnosis.
The WHO's ICD-11 uses the category hypochondriasis, or health anxiety disorder, within obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, whereas DSM-5-TR classifies illness anxiety disorder among somatic symptom and related disorders. Clinicians need to assess criteria within the applicable system rather than treating the two names as identical codes. See the WHO ICD-11 Clinical Descriptions and Diagnostic Requirements.
What Does Successful Treatment Look Like?
Success is reflected in less time lost to fear, fewer disruptive checking and reassurance rituals, improved participation in work, relationships, recreation, and medical care, and greater ability to tolerate ordinary diagnostic uncertainty. Many people continue noticing bodily sensations or occasionally worrying about health. A treatment plan is working when those experiences no longer dictate an escalating sequence of checking, internet searches, avoidance, and repeated consultations.
A person may initially ask for a guarantee that a serious disease is impossible. No responsible clinician can provide permanent certainty about every future illness. Treatment instead helps the patient distinguish genuine new medical information from repetitions of the same fear, engage in recommended preventive care, and make medical decisions collaboratively. The Mayo Clinic clinical treatment overview describes improved daily function, CBT, and regular planned visits as central aims.
For individual treatment planning, clinicians may measure health-anxiety severity, frequency of checking, reassurance seeking, avoidance, unplanned consultations, mood symptoms, and functioning at baseline and periodically thereafter. The Health Anxiety Inventory and related instruments can measure change. Their scores are monitoring tools, not substitutes for a diagnostic interview, physical examination, or individualized medical assessment.
Why CBT Is a First-Line Psychological Treatment
CBT for health anxiety examines how a bodily sensation, news story, screening result, or ambiguous physician comment is interpreted and what the person does next. Someone notices a harmless variation, imagines a catastrophic disease, checks repeatedly, feels temporary relief, and then becomes even more vigilant for the next sensation. Another person avoids doctors or health information because approaching them feels unbearable. Both routes can maintain high anxiety through attention, prediction, and short-term relief.
The 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis by Axelsson and Hedman-Lagerlöf found benefits of CBT for health anxiety across randomized trials. It also examined response, remission, delivery, and economic outcomes. Those aggregated studies used varying definitions and treatment packages, so a pooled result should be read as evidence for clinically significant health anxiety rather than a universal cure rate for modern IAD.
A particularly important update is the 2026 network meta-analysis by Lai and colleagues. It synthesized 35 randomized trials with 3,263 adults experiencing substantial health anxiety. CBT and several other psychological approaches showed favorable results compared with waiting-list control; component analyses associated exposure and response prevention, cognitive restructuring, and mindfulness with improvement. The authors regarded CBT and third-wave CBT approaches as reasonable first-line choices. Network estimates and component associations do not prove that every component is necessary or that one package is best for every individual.
A treatment often begins with collaborative assessment, a shared explanation of the person's health-anxiety pattern, agreed goals, and a plan to assess medical concerns safely. It then moves from understanding the cycle to practicing different responses in daily life. The clinician monitors progress and adapts the intervention if symptoms remain severe, the person has a significant medical illness, or another diagnosis becomes prominent.
### Cognitive Work: Testing Interpretations Rather Than Promising Safety
The therapist helps identify patterns such as interpreting a transient sensation as definite evidence of cancer, treating any residual uncertainty as unacceptable, or assuming that worrying continuously prevents a catastrophic outcome. Cognitive restructuring involves weighing evidence, differentiating possibility from probability, checking alternative explanations, and testing rigid assumptions through experience. The purpose is to improve reasoning under uncertainty, not to convince a patient that a real medical risk can never exist.
Behavioral experiments make the change concrete. For example, a patient who expects anxiety to increase indefinitely unless they search symptoms online may agree to postpone a nonessential search, record what happens, and review the result. Another may notice how frequent pulse checks change bodily attention and arousal. Experiments are tailored to medical circumstances and are not used to ignore dangerous signs or discontinue prescribed monitoring.
### Attention, Sensation, and Uncertainty
Threat-focused attention can magnify the importance of ordinary bodily fluctuations. People may repeatedly scan for a lump, heartbeat, unusual feeling, or cognitive lapse; this creates more opportunities to find ambiguous sensations. CBT helps people observe the difference between attention and evidence and redirect attention toward ordinary activities without demanding that bodily sensations disappear.
Intolerance of uncertainty is another useful clinical target. Even after appropriate evaluation, a small possibility of disease remains in everyday life. Therapy can help a person live with that uncertainty while maintaining normal prevention and timely evaluation of genuinely new problems. This approach addresses an important maintaining process but does not demonstrate that uncertainty intolerance caused the disorder in each patient.
Exposure Therapy for Illness Anxiety Disorder
Exposure means planned, gradual contact with situations, sensations, images, information, or uncertainty that the person has been avoiding or neutralizing through safety behaviors. For illness anxiety, feared situations might include passing a medical facility, hearing a disease mentioned, reading ordinary health information, resuming exercise after appropriate medical clearance, or waiting before a nonessential reassurance request. What counts as suitable exposure depends on the individual's clinical formulation and medical history.
During exposure, the patient practices staying engaged without resorting to the usual reassurance cycle. The therapeutic learning is that anxiety and uncertainty can be tolerated and that catastrophic predictions do not need to dictate behavior. Exposure can be distressing, so planning, informed agreement, graded tasks, and monitoring matter. The 2026 meta-analysis highlights exposure and response-prevention components as promising contributors to treatment outcomes.
Exposure is different from taking medical risks. It never requires ignoring emergency warning signs, withholding essential medication, refusing indicated screening, or challenging a medically necessary self-monitoring plan. Someone with diabetes, an arrhythmia, cancer surveillance needs, or another diagnosed condition may need medically prescribed checks that must be preserved. The clinician and therapist distinguish these from repetitive checks performed primarily to reduce anxiety.
### Exposure to Avoided Medical Care
Some patients repeatedly seek consultations; others avoid appointments, results, waiting rooms, or hospitals. In care-avoidant presentations, the goal may be to restore attendance at medically recommended appointments, make ordinary screening tolerable, or permit necessary conversations about risk. A carefully staged plan can include booking an indicated visit, tolerating the waiting period, asking questions during the appointment, and following the agreed clinical recommendation afterward.
Avoidance and excessive healthcare use can occur at different times in the same individual. Treatment targets the function of behavior, not merely the number of visits. Reducing unnecessary repeat examinations while restoring appropriate healthcare access is often the central balancing task.
### Reducing Checking and Reassurance Seeking
Repeatedly inspecting skin, measuring a normal body function without a medical indication, asking loved ones for absolute guarantees, looking up disease after disease, or scheduling duplicate opinions may relieve anxiety temporarily. When those behaviors become the primary way of regulating distress, they can increase the salience of threat and make future uncertainty harder to manage.
Response prevention means changing a chosen safety response while allowing the urge to pass. A patient may work toward one agreed medical information source, fewer redundant symptom searches, a pause before asking a familiar reassurance question, or a plan to discuss recurring worries at an already scheduled appointment. The approach is gradual and negotiated; family members are invited to provide empathy without becoming a permanent diagnostic reassurance service.
Treatment also distinguishes helpful information seeking from compulsive searching. A new or materially changed symptom may warrant evaluation. Repeating an internet search every hour after receiving an appropriate clinical plan often serves a different purpose. The treatment target is the repetitive pattern and its cost, not intellectual curiosity or legitimate medical self-advocacy.
What Happens in CBT Sessions?
At the assessment stage, the therapist asks what diseases are feared, what triggers alarm, how symptoms are interpreted, what checking and avoidance occur, which tests or diagnoses are already established, and how daily life is affected. Assessment includes depression, OCD symptoms, panic, generalized worry, trauma-related symptoms when relevant, substance use, and safety concerns. A primary care clinician or appropriate specialist remains involved when physical symptoms need evaluation.
The therapist and patient draw a personalized formulation: trigger, feared interpretation, emotional and bodily reaction, safety behavior, immediate relief, and longer-term consequences. A patient may be asked to keep a brief record that helps identify patterns. Recording should serve treatment and should not evolve into exhaustive symptom surveillance that itself increases anxiety.
Middle sessions may include cognitive exercises, graded exposure, reduction of repetitive internet searching and reassurance, experiments with attentional focus, compassionate responses to uncertainty, and conversations with trusted people about how to help. The treatment is active and collaborative, and tasks are revised when they cause unnecessary medical risk or prove mismatched to the actual problem.
Later sessions consolidate skills, examine how the person responded to a genuine health scare, plan for future doctor visits, and rehearse what to do when old checking patterns return. In a trial conducted in general hospital clinics, an adapted form of CBT for health anxiety was delivered over roughly four to ten sessions; in another trial, treatment lasted twelve weeks. These are research protocols rather than universal prescriptions for number of sessions.
What Does the Evidence Say About Duration and Long-Term Results?
The CHAMP randomized trial report followed 444 medical outpatients with pathological health anxiety. CBT tailored to health anxiety improved health-anxiety scores more than standard care, and differences persisted across repeated assessments up to five years. Participants could have coexisting medical conditions; importantly, the sample used older diagnostic conventions, and not every eligible patient joined the trial.
An eight-year follow-up of CHAMP continued to find an advantage for the CBT group on health-anxiety scores, but only a subset of the original trial was available for long-term analysis. Sustained average differences should not be converted into a prediction that every treated person remains symptom-free indefinitely.
Some people report meaningful benefit during the first several weeks, while others need a longer course, specialist consultation, or treatment of comorbidities. There is no scientifically reliable personal recovery timetable based solely on symptom duration or a questionnaire score. Treatment adequacy involves matching the diagnosis, completing a credible course, practicing between visits, and evaluating function as well as distress.
Is Online CBT Effective?
Therapist-guided internet CBT is a legitimate evidence-based delivery option for many adults with substantial health anxiety. Structured online programs can provide psychoeducation, exercises, exposure tasks, feedback, and periodic professional guidance. Their suitability depends on clinical complexity, access, digital literacy, privacy, and the quality of the program.
A 2020 randomized noninferiority trial in JAMA Psychiatry compared twelve weeks of internet-delivered CBT with face-to-face CBT in 204 adults with health anxiety. Online treatment met the specified noninferiority criterion for the primary short-term outcome and used less therapist time. The study was not powered to establish noninferiority at every later follow-up and does not justify treating any self-help website or general-purpose chatbot as equivalent to guided clinical CBT.
A 2025 secondary analysis of that trial examined moderators of response to exposure-focused CBT. Such analyses can inform future tailoring, but they cannot establish a deterministic rule that an individual will or will not benefit based on one initial trait. Accessible guided formats may improve access, while more complex cases benefit from closer clinician involvement.
Medication: When It May Help and What Is Known
Medication is an option for some patients, particularly when anxiety is severe, psychotherapy is unavailable or insufficient, or a co-occurring depressive or anxiety disorder needs treatment. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been studied in health-anxiety and hypochondriasis populations. A prescriber reviews previous response, other medicines, interactions, adverse effects, age, pregnancy considerations, medical illness, and patient preferences before selecting and monitoring treatment.
A 2017 four-arm randomized trial by Fallon and colleagues assigned 195 participants with DSM-IV hypochondriasis to fluoxetine, CBT, both, or placebo. The prespecified ordered trend in responder rates was statistically significant, but individual active-treatment responder proportions were not significantly different from placebo on the study's primary comparison; secondary continuous outcomes favored fluoxetine at week 24. The combination offered a small incremental benefit, and many participants did not respond. This nuanced result supports discussing medication as a clinical option without portraying it as a certain or universally superior treatment for DSM-5-TR IAD.
The evidence for medication is narrower than the broad CBT literature, and results from historical hypochondriasis trials need careful interpretation. The Mayo Clinic overview notes that antidepressants such as SSRIs may help some patients. A medication should never be started, stopped, or dose-adjusted solely on the basis of this article. Side effects and discontinuation symptoms can themselves become triggers for health anxiety; clinician-guided discussion is part of safe care.
Combining CBT and medication is reasonable in selected cases, although the best sequence and incremental benefit are less certain than whether CBT can help health anxiety. Decisions should reflect the patient's impairment, the precise diagnosis, previous treatment, medical context, and informed preferences rather than a rigid formula.
Planned Primary Care and Medical Follow-Up
A stable relationship with a primary care clinician can make treatment safer and more coherent. The clinician evaluates new symptoms according to ordinary medical standards, reviews known conditions and preventive care, discusses the rationale for testing or not testing, and coordinates specialists as needed. The therapist focuses on illness fears, avoidance, safety behaviors, and functional recovery. Both roles reinforce a consistent shared plan.
Some patients benefit from planned, periodic appointments rather than repeatedly seeking brief unscheduled reassurance. The interval is individualized to medical needs and symptom severity. Visits can review meaningful changes, treatment progress, scheduled screening, medication effects, and the agreed action plan for new symptoms. Planned care is a way to maintain continuity, not a promise to withhold tests or to restrict access to medically necessary evaluation.
Repeated investigations can sometimes be clinically important; the question is whether each investigation is medically justified for the current presentation. Unnecessary duplication can create burdens, incidental findings, expenses, and further uncertainty. Avoiding unnecessary testing should be based on clinical judgment and shared decision-making, never a rule that psychological treatment permanently closes medical investigation.
A helpful written plan can identify the responsible clinician, current confirmed diagnoses, required monitoring, appropriate preventive tests, typical recurring worries, clear warning signs that should prompt earlier review, and routes for urgent care. Clinicians should explain uncertainty honestly, avoid dismissive language, and communicate results in terms the patient can understand.
How to Respond When a New Symptom Appears
A previous IAD diagnosis does not rule out new disease. New, progressive, unexplained, or materially changed symptoms deserve evaluation according to their severity, associated findings, medical history, and clinical guidance. Treatment for health anxiety strengthens appropriate judgment by reducing repetitive attempts to eliminate uncertainty while preserving a responsive healthcare relationship.
Seek urgent medical assessment for potentially dangerous symptoms such as new severe chest pain, major difficulty breathing, stroke-like weakness or facial droop, loss of consciousness, a new seizure, severe confusion, or another acute emergency. The same principle applies when a patient has a genuine high-risk medical condition and receives an individualized emergency plan.
For nonurgent concerns, use the clinician-agreed pathway: note what changed, consider whether the symptoms fit established instructions, contact the relevant provider when indicated, and follow through on the recommendation. A therapeutic delay of repetitive checking is never a substitute for assessment of genuine emergency signs. When uncertain about urgency, contact a qualified medical service.
Illness Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Panic, and Somatic Symptom Disorder
Illness anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder can both involve repeated checking, reassurance seeking, or thoughts about illness. OCD is diagnosed through the broader organization of obsessions and compulsions, whereas IAD centers on persistent illness preoccupation and health anxiety with excessive health-related behavior or avoidance. The behaviors can look alike, and both conditions may occur together. Exposure-based treatment overlaps in technique, but the diagnostic formulation guides what to target. For the differential, see our published OCD vs Illness Anxiety Disorder guide.
Somatic symptom disorder emphasizes distressing physical symptoms accompanied by excessive symptom-related thoughts, feelings, or behaviors; symptoms may coexist with recognized medical disease. IAD typically involves absent or mild physical symptoms and a predominant fear of serious illness. This distinction matters for assessment and treatment focus; it does not imply that physical symptoms in either presentation are fabricated. The 2023 clinical review of somatic symptom disorder and health anxiety discusses their relationship and CBT evidence.
Panic disorder may focus on the meaning of acute palpitations, shortness of breath, or surges of bodily fear and on concerns about future attacks. Generalized anxiety disorder features broader difficult-to-control worry across domains. Depression may coexist with either diagnosis and affect motivation, energy, and prognosis. A licensed clinician considers symptom pattern, medical conditions, impairment, and the role of repetitive behaviors rather than diagnosing from a checklist alone.
For broader treatment choices across anxiety presentations, the English Hub's published Anxiety Treatment guide explains why treatment methods differ by condition. The condition-specific treatment described here remains the canonical owner of illness anxiety disorder treatment.
Trauma, Stress, and Other Possible Contributors
A history of serious illness, bereavement, family health fears, repeated exposure to threatening medical information, stressful life events, or preexisting anxiety can be relevant to a patient's individual history. Some are associated with health-anxiety patterns in research, but no single event is a required or universally established cause of IAD. Treatment should investigate the person's context without imposing a speculative causal story.
If clinically significant trauma-related symptoms are present, a clinician can assess whether trauma-focused treatment is needed in addition to health-anxiety work. If relationship conflict, work pressure, or chronic disease is central, these issues may affect engagement and the goals of care. A comprehensive plan addresses the patient's current needs and functional burden.
Children and Adolescents
Young people can experience substantial health fears, especially following an illness, a family health event, or repeated exposure to alarming information. Clinical assessment must account for developmental stage, parents' and caregivers' responses, school attendance, peer relationships, genuine medical problems, and the young person's ability to explain symptoms. A child's report of pain or fear deserves attentive evaluation.
CBT principles may be adapted to age and developmental level, with careful family participation and coordination with pediatric services where needed. Family involvement can support planned medical care and reduce repetitive reassurance without withholding comfort or needed medical attention. However, the 2024 IAD review concludes that direct research on IAD in children and adolescents remains limited; results from adult severe-health-anxiety trials should not be presented as pediatric efficacy estimates.
Treatment goals often include returning to school and normal activities safely, restoring sleep and routines, supporting the family, and communicating a clear plan among clinicians and educators. Any medication consideration requires the relevant pediatric prescribing and safety framework.
When Treatment Does Not Help Enough
Incomplete improvement does not automatically prove that IAD is untreatable. A clinician reviews whether the diagnosis is correct, whether there is a concurrent medical condition or another mental disorder, how the therapy was actually delivered, whether exposure was included when needed, whether checking behaviors were reduced, and whether the therapeutic relationship and practical circumstances supported participation.
Reassessment can identify untreated depression or OCD, severe avoidance, a substance-related condition, functional impairment that requires additional support, or new physical symptoms needing medical care. Sometimes a different therapist, more specialized health-anxiety CBT, a guided digital program, medication consultation, or a coordinated multidisciplinary plan is appropriate.
A treatment can reduce illness worry without restoring everyday functioning fully. Rehabilitation-oriented goals may be needed when the person has been absent from work or school for a long time, become socially isolated, or lost confidence in ordinary activity. Plans are individualized and guided by an evaluation of actual functional limitations.
Relapse Prevention and Future Healthcare Encounters
Recurrence of health worry after an unusual symptom, screening invitation, illness of a friend, or alarming news story is common enough to plan for in therapy. A lapse is a chance to revisit skills, not definitive evidence that treatment failed. The person can identify early signs such as longer symptom-search sessions, repeated reassurance messages, or abandoning normal activities.
A practical relapse plan names the behaviors to watch, the exposure or cognitive exercises that previously helped, the healthcare professional to consult for genuine medical changes, and the threshold for seeking a treatment booster. Relapse prevention works best when it keeps appropriate preventive care intact and allows ordinary uncertainty without escalating it into a crisis.
Families can help by listening respectfully, encouraging agreed activities, and using a collaborative response when repetitive reassurance requests recur. They should avoid making blanket medical judgments on the patient's behalf. Boundaries around repeated reassurance are therapeutic when they are paired with an explicit route to professional evaluation of new health concerns.
Practical Questions to Ask a Therapist or Clinician
During an initial consultation, it is reasonable to ask how the diagnosis was reached, which medical concerns still require evaluation, whether the clinician treats severe health anxiety, how CBT will address checking and avoidance, whether exposure will be used, what progress will be measured, and what will happen if treatment is insufficient.
Ask which appointments and self-monitoring are medically necessary, how to recognize new symptoms that require prompt assessment, whether other disorders need treatment, and how family members can help without becoming repetitive reassurance providers. These questions turn a vague goal of feeling certain into a shared, accountable care plan.
Frequently Asked Questions
### Can illness anxiety disorder be cured?
Many patients improve substantially with appropriately delivered treatment. Research documents meaningful reductions in health anxiety and benefits that can persist for years, but study outcomes vary and long-term remission cannot be guaranteed for any individual. The clinical focus is durable functional improvement and the ability to respond to genuine health concerns without returning to an escalating reassurance cycle.
### Is CBT better than medication for illness anxiety disorder?
CBT has a larger and more consistently supportive psychological treatment literature for substantial health anxiety. Medication, particularly SSRIs, can help selected patients, but medication evidence comes from fewer studies and often older diagnostic definitions. Combined treatment may be useful in some cases; there is no one-size-fits-all hierarchy for a medically complex patient.
### Is exposure therapy the same as ignoring symptoms?
No. Exposure targets disproportionate fear, avoidance, repetitive checking, and unneeded safety behavior under an agreed treatment plan. Appropriate medical assessment, prescribed monitoring, recommended screening, and emergency care remain available. Exposure should be designed with medical risks in view.
### How long does CBT for illness anxiety disorder take?
Trials have used programs ranging from several sessions to roughly twelve weeks, with follow-up and additional treatment depending on response. Clinical duration depends on severity, diagnostic complexity, other conditions, access, and practical engagement. No credible single number predicts an individual patient's recovery time.
### Should I stop Googling all health questions?
The goal is to distinguish useful health information from repetitive searching to obtain fleeting reassurance. A therapist can help set individualized, reasonable information-seeking boundaries while preserving informed participation in healthcare. A rigid prohibition on health information is neither necessary nor suitable for every patient.
### What if I actually have a medical illness?
A real medical illness and excessive health anxiety can coexist. Necessary medical treatment continues, while CBT may address repetitive catastrophic interpretation, avoidance, and behaviors that amplify distress. A mental health diagnosis must never replace medical assessment of new or changing symptoms.
### Can IAD and OCD occur together?
Yes. An assessment considers whether illness preoccupation meets IAD criteria, whether there are OCD obsessions and compulsions, and how overlapping checking behaviors function. Treatment can integrate relevant interventions while maintaining diagnostic clarity.
### Can online CBT work as well as in-person therapy?
A controlled noninferiority trial supports therapist-guided internet CBT as an effective alternative for adults with substantial health anxiety in that study context. Program quality, professional support, complexity, and clinical safety matter. An unguided website or general-purpose chatbot cannot automatically claim the same evidence.
### How should a doctor decide whether to order another test?
The choice depends on symptoms, examination, medical history, previous results, evolving risk, and clinical recommendations. A plan can discourage unnecessary duplicate testing while explicitly making room for reassessment when medically indicated. Psychological treatment should never be used to deny appropriate care.
### Is health anxiety an official diagnosis?
Health anxiety is a broad descriptive term. DSM-5-TR illness anxiety disorder has formal diagnostic criteria, while ICD-11 includes hypochondriasis or health anxiety disorder within a different classification grouping. Many people who experience health concerns meet neither diagnosis.
Related Articles
The following already-published English Hub resources provide additional context without duplicating the treatment intent of this article: OCD vs Illness Anxiety Disorder, Health OCD, and Anxiety Treatment: Therapy, Medication, Self-Help, and Shared Decision-Making. Additional EN-14 parent and neighboring pages will be linked when they have actually been published.
References
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