Illness anxiety disorder

With illness anxiety disorder, fear of a serious illness continues to dominate your life, even after careful assessment and explanation. The symptoms are not pretend: treatment addresses the anxiety cycle and a safe, agreed pathway for new physical warning signs. Call an ambulance if suicide or severe self-neglect poses an immediate danger.

• Spending hours worrying about cancer, heart disease, infection, neurological disease or another serious diagnosis.
• Repeatedly feeling, measuring, photographing or comparing the body and seeing normal variation as threatening.
• For one week, record what triggers the anxiety, what checking follows, how much relief it gives and when the anxiety returns.
• Delay online searches, measurements or requests for reassurance according to your treatment plan, and practise tolerating uncertainty in small, manageable steps.
• Make an appointment if fear of illness dominates your life for weeks to months, keeps returning after reassurance or limits daily functioning.
• For urgent GP care outside office hours, call HAP 9252. Call Ambulance 912 only for an immediate threat to life.