Hi there. This is @drceeyou here. And I want to talk about something that many people do not think as important. It is the subject of Hypochondriasis. Okay, that's a big word! You are probably wondering what it means an I will tell you in a minute. You could hazard a guess from the title of this post. Anyways, before I go ahead to explain that to you, let me tell you the story of one of my patients whom I consider to be exceptional in a way.
The Healthy Patient
It was a beautiful Monday morning and I had just signed into the EMR (Electronic Medical Records)system. I had seen a couple of patient before this young beautifully looking lady walked into my consulting room. She was in her late twenties and the look of despair on her face told me that I wasn't the first doctor she had seen regarding whatever it was that she came to see me for. As if she was reading my mind, the first words she said after I had asked her what her complain was were...
I am tired. I have seen many doctors and they all say that nothing is wrong with me.
In my mind I was like...
Ok. Maybe the doctors you saw didn't really know what they were doing.
Then it hit me like a clapper hits the bell when she mentioned the name of one of my teachers as one of the many doctors she had seen. That was when I looked at her and in my mind I was like...
If this doctor have seen you and he said there is nothing wrong with you, Who IS me? (pardon the error, it is for emphasis). I mean, you have seen my Oga at the top, what else am I going to say?
Then she began to bring out all the test results she had done, I could only note a few anomalies which were to be expected. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was in a dilemma, I didn't know what to do.
Hypochondriasis describes a condition in which a person believes, or at least to
very strongly suspects, that he/she is sick with a serious, perhaps life-threatening disease, even when medical assessments and examination reveal otherwise. Such fear can become so debilitating that the patient can become bed-bound or invalids, not because they actually have a debilitating illness but because they are fear that they have one.
Strange ain't it? People like this engage in what is called "doctor shopping" in which they go from one doctor to another getting tests, examinations and assessments that all usually point to something that isn't diagnosable. Some literature have it that it is more common in males than in females, while some others say that there is no sexual preponderance. But most literatures agree that it has a lifetime prevalence of between 1-5%.
The prevalence of the condition is not particular to any socioeconomic group, meaning that it can occur with the poor or with the rich.
Health Anxiety and Hypochondriasis
Some people view hypochondriasis as a spectrum in which hypochondriasis is the extreme. This school of thought believes that it begins with health anxiety. This thought is due to the derogatory way in which the public has used the term, Hypochondriasis. Most mental health professional advocate that the term should only be used in extreme cases of health anxiety. One thing is common to both health anxiety and hypochondriasis, the fear or belief that the patient has is usually based on misinterpretations of sensations felt in the body.
Definitions
Hypochondriasis is a psychiatric disorder and the DSM-IV( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders gives a definition or what we doctors would call "diagnostic criteria" for hypochondriasis.
hypochondriasis is diagnosed when these beliefs have been present for at leas t6 months, are not the result of delusional thinking or other psychiatric disorders, and create significant distress in a person’s life.
In two-thirds of patients with hypochondriasis, there is usually a coexisting psychiatric disorder like depression, panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder. It is usually categorized with a certain group of diseases consisting of persistent body symptoms that cannot be medically explained- Somatoform /somatization disorder.
Let me digress a little. There's a disorder called Body Dysmorphic Disorder(BDD) in which a person is aggressively preoccupied with a perceived defect in his/her appearance. It could be why some people go to do plastic surgeries to change their nose or hips. This is also categorized as a Somatization disorder, even though it doesnt take the form of the other ones.
Herein lies the problem
hypochondriasis could completely cripple a person's life. He could spend his life savings getting tested again and again. Sometimes getting some dangerous tests done. In some cases, the person gets sick from the variety of tests performed and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
In an effort to find satisfactory explanation to their perceived symptoms, patients apart from "doctor shopping" also begin to investigate their symptoms from medical texts, television programs, social media, or any other means. Over the years the internet has become the most popular means to get answers to questions in the medical line. This is called Cyberchondria.
When orthodox medicine has proved useless in providing a veritable answer to their pressing needs, these patients resort to alternative medicine, taking all kinds of herbs. And in Nigeria, herbs are not hard to find. lol.
Patients with this disorder usually feel really insulted, they think that the doctor is telling them that all they are feeling is in their heads or that they are making up the symptoms that they are giving.
Conclusion
It is vital that anyone who displays these symptoms seek for professional help from a psychiatrist. No! It doesn't mean that you are damaged beyond medical repair. People get over issues like this. I live in Nigeria, almost half the population needs psychiatric evaluation, but because people have the prevailing belief that anyone seeing a psychiatrist is "mad" or "lunatic", people would prefer to sit at home and wallow in their issues which could be easily sorted.
Cognitive Behavioral therapy has shown great success in rehabilitating people with hypochondriasis. But the social media and the type of content out there on the internet makes it difficult for a person to maintain remission as symptoms can be triggered by the slightest medical information.
I think medical series should be restricted from a certain group of people, people susceptible to health anxieties of an extreme nature. But there isn't a workable way to censor these movies as people have the right to choose. Many healthcare workers have reported a spike in health anxiety with the increase in medically related movies on Netflix.
That's all for now.
If this post was informative, pls leave an upvote and rehive.
Wow
That's really a serious one I must say.
To solve a problem, one must first identify the problem and when this problem isn't identified with the help of the laboratory tests and examinations the patient's worries increases.
Beautiful piece from you
I really learnt this here
Thanks for sharing
I am glad you did learn something.
Broo.. you went some deep length into psychiatrist.
Nice post but here is my advice.
I think you could have divided your post into 2 so you can use more stories. People love stories more.
It is a wide field. One post can deal with issues like this actually.
But you did well.
My take is, they are actually quite common, they just don't always come to the Dr. They have places they go and drugs they buy just to cater for them selves. In fact this case is one of the hidden causes of high rate of self medication.
It is those who are aware and educated that will show up at the clinic. Lol
Would institute that in my post on NCDS...
Crazy reality. And especially here where CBT isn't a common therapy, they are justified in their actions.
Exactly... You get.
We are still in the text books.
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