‘Anxiety as a symptom of anxiety’

Today, as we become our own diagnosticians, a quick Google search is handy but not always warranted. Inevitably, one question leads to an obsessive two hour-long spiral down the rabbit hole that is the internet, whether or not the issue deserves such immediacy. This behaviour is not new, as Caroline Crampton points out in her second book, A Body Made of Glass, although it has been on the rise.

- NANDINI BHATIA

On World Mental Health Day today, the book serves as a reminder that there is a distinction, albeit a thin one, between “normal” worry about one's health and a full-blown anxiety-driven “hypervigilance”. Hypochondria exists on this slippery terrain: “A perceived disease of the body that exists only in the mind”. It manifests itself as a constant fear that one is sick, a constant panic and a constant checking-for-signs for problems that have no visible evidence; “anxiety as a symptom of anxiety”. Ms Crampton makes a case for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) interpretation of the disorder as seen in light of anxiety and somatic disorders but makes no mention of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) guidelines that offer an independent stand on hypochondria— although a more acceptable term used these days is “health-anxiety”.