cyberchondria in the news

[robinhall]

Interesting article in the Telegraph

'Cyberchondria' fuelling anxiety epidemic clogging up hospital clinics (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/07/cyberchondria-fuelling-anxiety-epidemic-clogging-hospital-clinics/)

[robinhall]

Please read

second news report today on 'Cyberchondria'

Talking therapy could help to battle rising 'cyberchondria' (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_7-9-2017-12-37-49)

Good that the problem is getting more recognition

:-)

[Fishmanpa]

Please read

second news report today on 'Cyberchondria'

Talking therapy could help to battle rising 'cyberchondria' (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_7-9-2017-12-37-49)

Good that the problem is getting more recognition

:-)


Wow! This forum is a written example and proof of that article.

Positive thoughts

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think there are a lot of little holes in articles like these.

- Who is referring them to the hospitals they are "clogging up"? A&E is fair enough but outside of this the failure is on GP's who are wasting public money on pointless testing that the NHS have been telling them for years to cut down on (my own GP mentioned this when were talking about whether I should have a test another GP at the practice wanted - my GP said it was worthless and it was) "Health anxiety is estimated to cost the NHS more than £420 million a year in outpatient appointments alone, with millions more spent on needless tests and scans, they warned." Who sent them to these worthless, costly appointments? The NHS themselves and yet the media spin is always that it's the patient just as they love calling the elderly "bed blockers" when the reason they are often blocking those beds is because the NHS (and government) have closed down the cottage hospitals and other facilities they used to be sent to. Plus the rise in the number of elderly needing care hasn't been catered for just as the government hasn't increased spending on the NHS inline with the levels of population growth in the UK.
- "Instead, such cases should be offered a course of counselling, psychiatrists said, following a five-year study of patients treated in five English hospitals." which NICE guidelines have covered in both GAD & OCD for many years now.
- "Those given cognitive behavioural therapy saw a significant drop in anxiety levels, five years on, with similar death rates to those given standard NHS care, suggesting that counselling did not lead to a failure to discover life-threatening illnesses, researchers found." :doh: One would hope it didn't considering you have a GP as a primary care practitioner who has advised you to go to counselling. And since those with HA didn't actually have what they feared...of course they are still alive 5 years later like anyone else. :shrug:
- "The findings come from one of the largest studies of its kind, with the researchers stating the approach could prevent ‘worried well’ patients from making thousands of unnecessary trips to GP surgeries and hospitals in the future." So, not necessarily anxiety disorder sufferers but those that flock to GP surgeries for every minor ailment? Only education and eventually refusal deals with that, as GP surgeries are now practicing (like mine). Therefore I assume "worried well" means "people with potentially life limiting mental health problems" in a patronising way to describe them by some journo without a clue.
- "Researchers say only one in ten of patients with health anxiety are diagnosed, with many linking their symptoms to previous medical problems, such as heart attacks, and who are convinced they are at risk again." Really? To be honest, I can appreciate the worry such a serious medical condition can cause, just as I'm sure cancer survivors may do, but where is the connection to actual anxiety disorders? Doctors themselves would encourage people with such previous serious conditions to let them determine what is nothing and what is part of a very serious health condition.
- "“The problem is that the symptoms of health anxiety are misinterpreted as those of physical illness and so most sufferers attend medical practitioners in both primary and secondary care asking for help in searching for a physical diagnosis, so ignoring the mental core of the condition.” Which falls on the medical profession themselves, not the sufferer. If you know the core is mental, why do you clog up the system with tests you know only prove your professional opinion?

These are things I always dislike about these journo articles. They are clearly inexperienced to write them. This only continues to add to stigma through promoting ignorance.

CBT-HA, obviously a version of CBT tailored. Since HA being a fake term and overlapping different conditions then it must be wide-ranging enough to cover each one. I wonder how it adresses those with non HA elements? I would imagine it doesn't therefore leaving the disorder still there. I wonder if they recommend the current NICE agree route for CBT on this?

I think it's good that they get it into GP surgeries though.

But I find this worrying:

"Professor Tyrer said: “CBT-HA allows therapists with no previous experience to be trained relatively easily. It therefore has the potential to be used widely in general hospital settings under appropriate supervision."

A therapist should have experience of dealing with anxiety disorders and CBT training will be far more wide-ranging than a strip down version. The argument against IAPT was stripping down CBT into short course versions. Whilst any training is beneficial, if they think a short training course is going to take someone with no experience into being efficient then I would question that, especially when even IAPT training requires supervised hours to qualify, and practice, and ongoing supervision to work in a limited capacity as L2-3 in the NICE Stepped Care Model. But I'm sure it will allow the training companies to zip in to profit from it with another cert or dip. :winks:

I guess this study is not quite how the journos are playing it given we have things like this mentioned:

"Treatment given by nurses was found to be superior to standard care, improving patients’ condition from severe to mild, and nurses were found to be at least as good as psychologists and other health professionals. Patients in cardiology clinics showed the greatest reduction in HAI scores compared with standard after five years."

What were they doing in cardiology clinics? If there was nothing wrong they would be straight back to their GP's. This seems to suggest, inline with the previous comment about past heart attacks, this study is mixed with people suffering anxiety due to real conditions rather than simply all mental health as we see on here. That's unfortunate as you as mixing them in with those with no physical conditions means a dirty sample.

[swajj]

How is any of that new? CBT has been used to treat HA for many years.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think it's because they have tried a "CBT HA" so to journos it seems new like "CBT TF" may.

I have a suspicion though that this study was more about treatment of those with anxiety on top of real physical illness. Again, that's not new either as CBT is used to help in cancer, even asthma or serious personality stuff.

It doesn't help when journos strip out the detail.

Having said this I am pro therapy and my comments are not a reflection on Robin's CBT programme.

[tiredofthis14]

these stories anoy me they make it sound like we enjoy being the way we are

[Fishmanpa]

these stories anoy me they make it sound like we enjoy being the way we are

Respectfully, I don't agree at all with that but I can see how you might get that impression based on the spiral you're currently in. My impression is that it implied rightly that the HA behavior of Googling is basically self-inflicted. It's like crack to an addict.

As I said, this forum is a written example of that. What they're saying about CBT-HA is not much different than what's been advised on the boards.... stop Googling, self examining yourself and seeking reassurance.

CBT-HA works by helping patients to challenge their thoughts and recognise how their anxiety is maintained by seeking reassurance and excessive checking of their bodies, as well as checking their symptoms online. This is supported by behavioural experiments testing out the new ways of thinking and offering new less threatening alternatives for their worries.

So if this adaptation of CBT is effective, that's a good thing!

Positive thoughts

[MyNameIsTerry]

How is any of that new? CBT has been used to treat HA for many years.

Yep, it's one of those studies to give someone a job really. It's basic anxiety stuff that we al know let alone the highly trained & experienced. Apparently therapists aren't already doing all this! :doh:

Next up, a study about what bears do in the woods. :winks:

---------- Post added at 01:20 ---------- Previous post was at 01:04 ----------

If you take out the words "health anxiety"...

"is estimated to cost the NHS more than £420 million a year in outpatient appointments alone, with millions more spent on needless tests and scans, they warned."

What would you think about a statement including "needles tests and scans"? Would you think it best to stop requesting needsless tests and scans in the first place? Wouldn't it be nice, since they already know they are needless, to put some small monies into educating & monitoring to ensure it stops and then we have £420m per extra to spend in the rest of the NHS?

Why exactly does introducing CBT-HA prevent this loss? It doesn't. CBT-HA will better help the patient but the decision to waste money on tests is seperate to this and not dependant on rolling it out.

And who exactly is going to pay to train everyone?
When are doctors & nurses going to find the time to be trained when they say they are over capacity already?
How exactly are they going to fit in 6 CBT-HA sessions? I thought they are overworked underpayed? Or are the nurses & junior doctors having us all on? Why are they striking? Why do the NHS say they need more money and that budget increases planned just won't cut it?

GP's have 10 minutes to see you, how will they fit this in? The answer is going to be more staff. Where from? Who is going to pay for them? And why can't we already get enough trained therapist in IAPT which was introduced for faster access?

Am I also the only one who is a little bit skeptical that you can take "severe HA" cases and treat them with 6 magic CBT-HA sessions? The success rate reported seems to be 100%. Yet IAPT can't achieve that with full CBT in 12-15?

We are in austerity. How much and who pays? Hospital bosses tell us A&E's are bursting to the point of closure with the Red Cross even helping some out yet we are going to find potentially hundreds of millions for CBT-HA? We have Brexit coming up which, even if proves successful, will mean a downturn in the economy which is already hitting us.

GP's are already complaining they can't cope with the elderly and A&E's are (quite rightly) complaining GP's are pushing the elderly onto them.

Any new money coming into the NHS is going to go to priority services, not the underfunded ones like mental health. I'm sure we would prefer the money spent on those cancer drugs we can't afford or to stop the elderly dying on wards.

But again...£420m wasted by GP's on pointless tests. Why? Is it because they don't have a clue? Or is it because telling many a HAer they will get "reassurance tests" gets them out of the surgery so you can push their issues further downstream and just do it again next time. are GP's really so ignorant in today's NHS that they don't realise this only enables HA?

I spent years working in efficiency improvement circles for a major corporate. If I found a £420m waste due to a dept passing unnecessary workloads for customers to a dept would the customer be blamed or inefficient dept? I can guarantee you there would be some rather unpleasant meetings with the people hitting their own targets by pushing their workloads downstream...because I've been involved in such activities. Unfortunately the public sector has always been a big offender for waste but unlike shareholders, it's easier to fleece taxes.