Can health anxiety be centered around mental health problems?

[VictoriaS143]

Hey guys! This is my first post so bare with me please! I was wondering if a person can be a hypochondriac when it comes to mental health issues. I'm dealing with a very debilitating fear/worry that I'm developing schizophrenia and I literally feel like I have actual symptoms including hearing/seeing things. This obsession came about after I had a panic attack February 19th. Ever since then I've been obsessed with schizophrenia (googling symptoms, checking myself, going to doctors) and it's just getting worse. It sucks because with schizophrenia there is no medical test that can produce a "Yes you definitely have it" or "No you definitely don't" answer which doesn't help ease anything. Can a person make themselves feel like they have the symptoms of schizophrenia from worrying about it so much? I'm desperate for some reassurance of course that I will be okay but anything from someone will help.
Thank you.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi and welcome to NMP, Victoria

As an OCD sufferer I can tell you straight away that there is a known theme in OCD commonly referred to as Schiz OCD which covers this. You may come across it as a theme of the "Pure O" end of OCD. In reality, medical literature don't consider these terms and look at the real obsessive-compulsive behaviour so these "themes" are often explained by the charities as they are non medical terms that sufferers use to talk about their OCD.

There are quite a few threads about this, some on this board, some on the GAD board and some on the OCD board. I will have a look and post you some to be going on with but I'm sure one or two active members will also spot your thread and comment on their experiences of this.

Like all forms of anxiety, the Cognitive Distortions in play will cause your thinking to be negative and skewed. This means you will focus on things that fit to your worry and not look for things which disprove it (Confirmation Bias).

You give a good example of one of the Cognitive Distortions - all-or-nothing thinking (dichotomous reasoning). We want an absolute, a yes or no, a 100% answer or we feel we can never truly accept. But this is false because life is full of shades of grey, as is medicine when they are working through processes of elimination to find the most likely remaining possibility. We have trouble accepting this because the fight or flight response is basically built to find something definitive and why e.g. that bear is charging at me and my spear is broke so I'm running away because it will kill me.

Schizophrenia is the most common mental health illness concern but you see others too e.g. bipolar, delusional issues, etc. Really it can cover any including such as the organic ones like dementia. The basic issues are the same.

There are differences in how our doctors diagnose what falls under HA between the US & UK. This is because we use the WHO manual, your doctors use the US derived manual. This can mean differences between what disorder they diagnose but it's still essentially an anxiety disorder, sometimes it's just a different name. GAD, OCD or "Illness Anxiety Disorder" are the ones in the US manual. The latter is actually an OCD spectrum disorder (we don't have a spectrum in our manual) so it could fall under either BUT essentially yes this is well covered under anxiety as a whole.

There is an excellent website by a guy in the US called Steve Seay and I think he has articles about this. He's a licenced clinical psychologist over there and I found his articles extremely helpful in understanding finer details that the charities in the UK leave out. They would be worth a read to you.

I will dig you out a few threads I know of so you can see what others have said.

---------- Post added at 05:03 ---------- Previous post was at 04:58 ----------

Here are some threads. The one created by ChocoOrange has a post in from me with links to several threads about schizophrenia worries in OCD:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=177028
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=177300
http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=174792

[VictoriaS143]

Thank you so much for responding so quickly! It's insane how easily our OCD brains can grasp so strongly on something and let it take over. I've read an article about schiz OCD and it fit everything I felt so perfectly but like you said it hasn't become a true diagnosis in the medical field yet which is disheartening. I'm gonna check out the links you sent me! Thank you again so much for responding, it's greatly appreciated.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yeah, if you have a read of those threads you will see just how much it has affected others. People start to look for sounds, things in their vision, see coincidences in things, etc. Normally we get all of these anyway but simply ignore them or don't focus on them, they just float through or we say "that's weird" and just naturally move on.

Schiz OCD is accepted, it's just that in medical literature, OCD is OCD. It tends to get defined based on whether it leans more towards being obsessions, more compulsions or a mixture of both. OCD is a vast area and so they don't use these terms for themes that we do e.g. HOCD (homosexuality OCD), ROCD (Relationship OCD), POCD (Paedophilia OCD), etc because they often get used incorrectly e.g. R can be Relationship or Religious, H can be Homosexuality or Harm, and then the themes aren't accurate in terms of name anyway e.g. Homosexuality OCD covers not only fear of being homosexual but fear of someone who is homosexual being heterosexual.

If they recorded all these as specific names, they would be having to document a lot of different disorders (it would keep updating too) and the thing about OCD is, themes change. I'm in the mixed category so have had many themes, some Pure O, most more compulsion based. Some on here shift from theme to theme, some stick with one strong theme.

So, from the doctors point of view it matters what the obsessive-compulsive patterns of behaviour and thinking are, not the theme they focus on. The theme they focus on then becomes important at the therapy stage.

So, your doctor will accept it as part of anxiety, and OCD if it warrants that diagnosis. They just tend to record the themes for the therapy part and to back up the diagnosis.

[BrokenAge]

Wow Victoria. You sound exactly how I did. It feels good to not be alone. You'll learn with this fear that time in fact does heal. You'll start to accept everything as anxiety and OCD, not worst case scenario. Feel free to message me if you need too. I can probably give some good advice when it comes to this fear

[VictoriaS143]

Wow Victoria. You sound exactly how I did. It feels good to not be alone. You'll learn with this fear that time in fact does heal. You'll start to accept everything as anxiety and OCD, not worst case scenario. Feel free to message me if you need too. I can probably give some good advice when it comes to this fear

I really really hope so BrokenAge because things right now seem to just be getting worse. I just pray every day For there to be some light at the end of this darkness. I'm very happy for you as it sounds like your OCD about this has gotten much better

[Josh1234]

No. You have anxiety. You don't "graduate" to another mental health illness from anxiety. This is it. Anxiety can cause some extreme disturbances in the body, both mentally and physically. The fact that you are worried about and fear going crazy means you aren't going crazy. Crazy people don't know they're crazy. Crazy people talk to themselves and see nothing wrong with it. Crazy people run down the street naked. Do you do those things?

[MyNameIsTerry]

No. You have anxiety. You don't "graduate" to another mental health illness from anxiety. This is it. Anxiety can cause some extreme disturbances in the body, both mentally and physically. The fact that you are worried about and fear going crazy means you aren't going crazy. Crazy people don't know they're crazy. Crazy people talk to themselves and see nothing wrong with it. Crazy people run down the street naked. Do you do those things?

The OP wasn't asking whether anxiety leads to schizophrenia but whether HA covers worry about getting more extreme mental health illness. It does, well OCD certainly does.

[Josh1234]

The OP wasn't asking whether anxiety leads to schizophrenia but whether HA covers worry about getting more extreme mental health illness. It does, well OCD certainly does.

Yes, and Im letting her know she doesn't have it for the reasons I stated.