REVIEW OF AN ARTCLE ON HYPOCHONDRIASIS BY

TIMOTHY M.SCARELLA, JOHANNES , LAFERTON, AND BARTHUR BARSKY

GROUP MEMBERS: AMBER ZAIB AND RUHEENA SALMAN

SUMBITTED TO: MAM NELOFAR

DATE: APRIL, 30, 2019

INTRODUCTION:

Every single person get fretful and worried, if he may has to encounter some dreadful ailment or
any such bad experience related to his health in his life but holding on to that experience and
not letting it go is, where the psychological problems begin. Life has to make us swirl through
many appalling experiences but when you cling unto them and not let yourself come out of those
shackles of anxiousness and despair then you get trapped in more horrific vicious cycle and that
called illness anxiety disorder or hypochondriasis.

OBJECTIVE:

The objective of this journal or report was to inquire the pattern of psychiatric co-morbidity in
hypochondriasis and to assess the relationship between of health anxiety to anxiety , depression
and somatoform disorder.

METHOD:

194 participants meeting criteria for DSM-4 hypochondriasis. They were assessed by various
sociodemographic variables, results of structured diagnostic interviews and validated instruments
for assessing various symptoms of this psychopathology

RESULT:

The result showed the majority of individuals with this illness anxiety disorder have got some
psychiatric illness. The mean for co morbidity was 1.4 and 35.1% only had illness anxiety
disorder. Most of them only had anxiety disorder as co morbid with is hypochondriasis .The use
of multiple regression analysis showed that hypochondriasis has strong correlation with anxiety
disorder and a weaker co relation with somatoform symptoms and no co relation with depressive
symptoms.

CONSLUSION:

From analysis of the results we have reached to this point that hypochondriasis is distinct from
other psychiatric disorder, analysis of co morbidity pattern showed that it should be classified
along with anxiety disorder rather than somatoform or mood disorder.