Health Anxiety

Health Anxiety symptoms include excessive worrying about physical or mental illness. Some examples include sexually-transmitted diseases or infections, potentially terminal diseases like cancer, and mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. A person usually fears that unless they scan for, or find any abnormalities, they are putting their physical and/or mental health in jeopardy. This leads a person to engage in excessive checking and researching behaviors. Other symptoms of this disorder can include frequent hospital visits or checking oneself into a psychiatric facility for fear that the onset of a serious mental illness is inevitable..

Compulsive behaviors can become quite costly, both emotionally and financially. Medical bills can accrue when a person starts compulsively visiting their doctor, the emergency room, or a mental health professional. Emotional consequences include rifts in relationships and difficulty concetrating at work. Since a person can engage in checking behaviors nearly all day, it can be challenging to resist urges to internally and externally check on the functioning of the mind and body.