Do You Suffer From Health Anxiety?

With cases of anxiety and worry about getting ill on the rise, we look at how we can overcome this fear

- Gillian Harvey, Ashleigh Page

After a year of lockdowns, isolation, masks and vaccinations, it’s little wonder that we’re more conscious than ever about our health. But according to reports, anxiety diagnoses have risen to over 40 per cent in adults in the last year.* While some welcomed ‘freedom day’ with open arms, one in five people are still suffering from psychological distress as a direct result of the pandemic.**

Although COVID-19 created a new fear for anxiety sufferers, what about those who experienced health anxiety way before the pandemic?

Health anxiety is recognised as a condition in which obsessive fears about health become excessive. It is defined by compulsively checking for symptoms, researching diseases, obsessing over normal bodily sensations or avoiding anything that could potentially lead to you being exposed to disease.

With more people than ever affected by the condition, we speak to one woman about her own experiences and how she finally overcame her fear of getting ill.

‘I became paranoid about the slightest ache’

Gillian Harvey, 43, from Hertfordshire, lives with her husband Ray, 70, and children Lily, 11, twins Joe and Tim, nine, Evie, seven and Robbie, six.

I waited by the phone, rigid with worry and answered at the first ring. ‘Your HIV test was negative,’ the doctor said. Relief washed over me. But just five minutes later, the doubts crept in: had they done the test properly? Had they given me the right result? Was it a false negative?

FEELINGS OF ISOLATION