ETIOLOGY OF HYPOCHONDRIA

Hypochondria is an anxiety disorder marked by the persistent and misguided

believe that you have serious health problems when no health problems are
present, or where those physical symptoms that are present are caused by your own
mind. 

 A History of Physical and/or Sexual Abuse – Observing or experiencing

physical and sexual abuse, particularly as a child, can result in a heightened sense
of physical vulnerability and lead a person to suspect serious health issues when
they are not present. A history of abuse can also lead a person to feel a sense of
insecurity in their interpersonal attachments, which causes them to engage in
compensatory care-seeking behavior.

 Google Syndrome - There is some evidence that search engines may contribute
to hypochondria. People Google weird feelings they have, and find that they're
linked to serious diseases. They then start to believe they may have a bad disease,
and this type of behavior is reinforced.

 A Serious Childhood Illness - A serious illness during childhood wherein the

individual feared for their own health and was the focus of much health-related
attention from the people surrounding them can lead to a conviction as an adult
that any health abnormality could have serious consequences, and/or to
indirectly seek the same attention they received from their caregivers when they
were a child from doctors as an adult.

 Serious Illnesses or Deaths of Family Members or Friends - Seriously ill

family members or friends can create an environment, for a child especially,
where love and attention are directly linked to illness. Observing this, the child
may assume that they must be ill to deserve love and attention, and continue to
hold this belief subconsciously even into adulthood. When a close family member
or friend dies, at any point in a person’s life, the shock and grief related to the
death can easily trigger fear and obsessive concerns about personal health.

 Difficulty in Expressing Emotions - People who have difficulty in expressing

their emotions, whether it is due to the way they were raised to behave or to
traumatic past experiences that caused them to feel “safer” at an emotional
distance from other people, may find that the only way to connect emotionally
with others is to provoke concern in them regarding potential health problems. A
person who does this may not even realize they are doing it, apart from being
aware on some level, perhaps even subconsciously, that being sick and having
people worry about them makes them feel better.
 A Hypochondriacal or Overly Protective Parental Figure - Learned behavior
from a hypochondriacal caregiver is a prominent cause of hypochondria.
Behaviors taught to a person during childhood are likely to persist into adulthood
by helping to form their beliefs about the world around them. A child with a
hypochondriac as a caregiver is likely to believe that it is healthy to constantly
question one’s health, and that a primary feature of the world around them is that
it is a highly dangerous and unhealthy place. An overly protective caregiver
instills many of the same lessons into a person during childhood, while also
teaching them the notion that people who care about them ought to worry
constantly about their health and be highly receptive to their health complaints,
even when they are minor.

Etiology of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD)

Body dysmorphic disorder is a disorder that involves belief that one's own
appearance is unusually defective and is worthy of being hidden or fixed. This belief
manifests in thoughts that many times are pervasive and intrusive.

The causes of BDD fall into two major categories, neurobiological and psychosocial.

 Neurobiological causes: Research indicates that patients diagnosed with

BDD have serotonin levels that are lower than normal. Serotonin is a
neurotransmitter— a chemical produced by the brain that helps to transmit
nerve impulses across the junctions between nerve cells. Low serotonin
levels are associated with depression and other mood disorders.
 Psychosocial causes:  Another important factor in the development of BDD
is the influence of the mass media in developed countries, particularly the
role of advertising in spreading images of physically "perfect" men and
women. Impressionable children and adolescents absorb the message that
anything short of physical perfection is unacceptable. They may then develop
distorted perceptions of their own faces and bodies.

A young person's family of origin also has a powerful influence on his or her
vulnerability to BDD. Children whose parents are themselves obsessed with
appearance, dieting, and/or bodybuilding; or who are highly critical of their
children's looks, are at greater risk of developing BDD.

An additional factor in some young people is a history of childhood trauma or

abuse. Buried feelings about the abuse or traumatic incident emerge in the
form of obsession about a part of the face or body. This "reassignment" of
emotions from the unacknowledged true cause to another issue is called
displacement. For example, an adolescent who frequently felt overwhelmed
in childhood by physically abusive parents may develop a preoccupation at
the high school level with muscular strength and power.