Fear disease phobia

Nosophobia, or Fear of Disease: Diagnosis, Treatment, More

Nosophobia is the extreme or irrational fear of developing a disease. This specific phobia is sometimes simply known as disease phobia.

You might also hear it referred to as medical students’ disease. This name stems from previous assumptions that nosophobia tends to mostly affect medical students surrounded by information about different diseases. But some 2014 evidence lends less support to this idea.

It’s common to feel some anxiety when serious health conditions spread through your community. But for people with nosophobia, this anxiety can be overwhelming, affecting their everyday life.

Read on to learn more about nosophobia, including common symptoms and how it compares to illness anxiety disorder, formerly known as hypochondria.

The main symptom of nosophobia is significant fear and anxiety around developing a disease, usually a well-known and potentially life-threatening one, such as cancer, heart disease, or HIV.

This worry tends to persist even after healthcare providers examine you. You might feel the urge to see your doctor frequently for exams or tests, even if they’ve already given you a clean bill of health.

This intense fear and anxiety can result in physical symptoms, including:

dizziness
nausea
increased pulse
sweating
rapid breathing
trouble sleeping

Nosophobia also involves avoidance. You may not want to know anything at all about the disease. Hearing about it in the news or from others may trigger distress. Or, you might avoid public transportation or spaces, such as grocery stores.

If you have a family history of a certain diseases, you might go out of your way to avoid all potential risk factors.

On the other hand, some people with nosophobia prefer to learn as much as they can about certain diseases. They might spend hours reading about the condition or monitoring the news for stories about potential outbreaks.

Nosophobia is often confused with hypochondria, which is now known as illness anxiety disorder. While nosophobia involves the fear of developing a specific disease, illness anxiety disorder involves more general worries about illness.

Someone with illness anxiety disorder might worry that minor symptoms, such as a sore throat or headache, are a sign of something serious. Someone with nosophobia might not have any physical symptoms but worry that they actually have (or are going to have) a specific, serious medical condition.

For example, someone with illness anxiety disorder might worry that their headache is a symptom of a brain tumor. Someone with nosophobia might constantly worry about developing a brain tumor, even if they don’t have any symptoms.

People with illness anxiety disorder are also more likely to reach out to loved ones or healthcare providers for reassurance. Someone with nosophobia may be more likely to avoid thinking about their health or the underlying disease they’re concerned about, though this isn’t always the case.

Several factors may contribute to nosophobia, and in many cases, there isn’t a clear underlying cause.

If someone close to you has a serious illness and has complications, you might worry that the same could happen to you. This is especially true if you’re taking care of that person.

Living through a disease outbreak can also contribute to nosophobia. In these cases, you might be inundated with news footage about the disease or constantly hear about it from friends or coworkers.

In recent years, experts have suggested that easy access to health information on the Internet may also play a role. You can find a detailed list of symptoms and complications associated with just about any diseases online.

This has become such a common cause of anxiety that there’s even a term for it — cyberchondria.

You might also be more likely to develop nosophobia if you already have anxiety or a family history of it.

Nosophoboia is typically diagnosed if worry and anxiety about developing a disease makes daily life difficult or has a negative impact on quality of life.

If you’re concerned that your anxiety about diseases might be a phobia, make an appointment with your healthcare provider. They can refer you to a specialist who has experience diagnosing and treating phobias.

If you’re experiencing distress that relates to fear of a disease, consider talking to a therapist. In therapy, you can begin addressing your fear and develop strategies to cope with it.

While specific phobias don’t always require treatment, nosophobia can involve a fear of going anywhere you might be exposed to a certain disease. This can make it difficult to work, go to school, or take care of other needs.

Therapy can be very helpful for specific phobias. The two main types of therapy used are exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Exposure therapy

This approach exposes you to what you’re afraid of in the safe environment of therapy. Your therapist will start by helping you develop tools to deal with the anxiety and distress that comes up when you think about a disease, such as meditation or relaxation techniques.

Eventually, you’ll move on to confronting some of these fears, using the tools you’ve learned to help manage your anxiety.

This exposure might involve watching news stories about disease outbreaks, reading about different diseases, or spending time around people with the condition, if it isn’t contagious.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

Another helpful therapy is CBT. Though your therapist may incorporate a level of exposure into therapy, CBT primarily focuses on teaching you to recognize and challenge irrational thoughts and fears.

When you begin to worry about the disease, you might stop and reconsider whether your thought is rational. Reframing irrational or distressing thoughts can help improve anxiety.

Another important aspect of therapy for nosophobia is helping reduce your need to seek reassurance that you don’t have a specific disease. A therapist can help you develop better coping tools you can rely on when you feel like seeking reassurance from others.

Medication

While there’s no medication that specifically treats specific phobias, certain drugs can reduce symptoms of fear and anxiety and may be helpful when used along with therapy.

A prescriber may prescribe beta blockers or benzodiazepines for short-term or occasional use:

Beta blockers help decrease physical symptoms of anxiety. For example, they can help you maintain a steady heart rate and keep your blood pressure from rising.
Benzodiazepines are a type of sedative that can help with anxiety symptoms. They can be addictive, so they’re not meant to be used for a long time.

Fearing disease is natural, especially with the all the information that’s now available about different diseases online.

If your concern about illness focuses on a specific disease and begins to affect your daily life, emotional health, or your ability to function as you usually would, consider reaching out your healthcare provider. Living with extreme fear isn’t easy, but phobias are very treatable.

Nosophobia, or Fear of Disease: Diagnosis, Treatment, More

Nosophobia is the extreme or irrational fear of developing a disease. This specific phobia is sometimes simply known as disease phobia.

It’s common to feel some anxiety when serious health conditions spread through your community. But for people with nosophobia, this anxiety can be overwhelming, affecting their everyday life.

Read on to learn more about nosophobia, including common symptoms and how it compares to illness anxiety disorder, formerly known as hypochondria.

The main symptom of nosophobia is significant fear and anxiety around developing a disease, usually a well-known and potentially life-threatening one, such as cancer, heart disease, or HIV.

This intense fear and anxiety can result in physical symptoms, including:

dizziness
nausea
increased pulse
sweating
rapid breathing
trouble sleeping

If you have a family history of a certain diseases, you might go out of your way to avoid all potential risk factors.

Several factors may contribute to nosophobia, and in many cases, there isn’t a clear underlying cause.

If someone close to you has a serious illness and has complications, you might worry that the same could happen to you. This is especially true if you’re taking care of that person.

Living through a disease outbreak can also contribute to nosophobia. In these cases, you might be inundated with news footage about the disease or constantly hear about it from friends or coworkers.

This has become such a common cause of anxiety that there’s even a term for it — cyberchondria.

You might also be more likely to develop nosophobia if you already have anxiety or a family history of it.

Nosophoboia is typically diagnosed if worry and anxiety about developing a disease makes daily life difficult or has a negative impact on quality of life.

If you’re experiencing distress that relates to fear of a disease, consider talking to a therapist. In therapy, you can begin addressing your fear and develop strategies to cope with it.

Therapy can be very helpful for specific phobias. The two main types of therapy used are exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Exposure therapy

Eventually, you’ll move on to confronting some of these fears, using the tools you’ve learned to help manage your anxiety.

This exposure might involve watching news stories about disease outbreaks, reading about different diseases, or spending time around people with the condition, if it isn’t contagious.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

Another helpful therapy is CBT. Though your therapist may incorporate a level of exposure into therapy, CBT primarily focuses on teaching you to recognize and challenge irrational thoughts and fears.

When you begin to worry about the disease, you might stop and reconsider whether your thought is rational. Reframing irrational or distressing thoughts can help improve anxiety.

Medication

While there’s no medication that specifically treats specific phobias, certain drugs can reduce symptoms of fear and anxiety and may be helpful when used along with therapy.

A prescriber may prescribe beta blockers or benzodiazepines for short-term or occasional use:

Beta blockers help decrease physical symptoms of anxiety. For example, they can help you maintain a steady heart rate and keep your blood pressure from rising.
Benzodiazepines are a type of sedative that can help with anxiety symptoms. They can be addictive, so they’re not meant to be used for a long time.

Fearing disease is natural, especially with the all the information that’s now available about different diseases online.

Phobias: symptoms and causes

Phobia is a strong fear that cannot be controlled and rationally explained.

If ordinary fear can be explained logically and thus get rid of it, then phobias are irrational and often occur along with panic attacks. Fighting a phobia is very difficult, since the cause of its occurrence is often difficult to explain, but timely consultation with a psychotherapist can solve this problem and save a person from uncontrollable experiences and unpredictable actions. nine0005

The irrationality of a phobia lies in the fact that a person's fear of a certain object or phenomenon does not correspond to the actual danger. For example, a huge, aggressive dog is a threat, and the fear for health and life in this case is rational, but a miniature lapdog in a leash and in a muzzle, which evokes similar emotions, defies explanation. Fear of a dog can be overcome with logical arguments (the owner of the dog is nearby and assures you of its friendliness), but if no one and nothing can calm you down and panic sets in, then this is already a phobia. nine0005

The symptoms of any kind of phobia are similar and resemble those of a panic attack:

strong heartbeat;
breathing difficulties, choking;
dry mouth;
increased blood pressure;
discomfort in the stomach and nausea;
chest pain or pressure;
shiver;
dizziness; nine0019
increased sweating;
weakness in the legs;
a feeling of unreality of what is happening or of oneself.

The main causes of phobias

Experts identify the following causes of inexplicable fear - biological, genetic, psychological, social.

Biological and hereditary factors nine0005

The lack of a certain acid in the body (gamma-aminobutyric acid), which has a sedative effect, leads to an increase in fear and anxiety, which in turn contributes to the risk of phobias. The reasons for the decrease in the amount of this acid can be brain injuries, long-term use of drugs and psychotropic drugs, stress and depression.

In addition, the cause of phobias may be a genetic factor. If one of the parents suffers from a phobic disorder, then the risk of developing a phobia in a child is very high. However, what exactly influenced this, hereditary predisposition or certain behavior of a relative, it is difficult to say. nine0005

Social causes

Most often, the emergence of phobias contributes to the influence of external factors, especially various events of a shocking nature that occurred in childhood. It is the psychological traumas of childhood: insect or animal bites, loss of loved ones or prolonged separation, negative experience of swimming or indoors, and the like that usually grow into unpredictable fears.

Psychological factors

Some phobic disorders and panic attacks are not traceable to any trauma or event, in which case the causes are often hidden in the subconscious. Incorrect explanation of any words or actions, an incorrect view of current and future events, infringement of characteristic features and other psychological problems can also affect the occurrence of phobias.

Certain fears appeared in the process of evolution, for example, the fear of open space has its roots in the distant past, when there was a danger of attack by wild animals in an unprotected place. nine0005

Social causes

The appearance of social phobias can be facilitated by excessively strict upbringing or criticism of parents, inadequate assessment by adults of the events taking place with the child, unsuccessful experience of communicating with peers or the opposite sex.

Thus, traumatic situations, affecting the fragile psyche or hereditary predisposition, as well as social and financial situation, contribute to the emergence and development of various phobias. nine0005

Types of phobias

Currently, experts distinguish about 400 types of irrational fear. The systematization of phobias is a rather difficult process, since here it is necessary to take into account the factors of their appearance and development, signs and methods of treatment. Let us dwell on the most popular way of distinguishing varieties of phobias - according to the plot of fear, i.e., according to the object that causes such strong emotions.

Fear of certain situations nine0005

This includes the strongest negative experiences from anticipation or being in a situation. Such phobias usually appear after experiencing intense fear in certain circumstances. This may be the fear of any type of transport (airplanes, ships, trains, etc.), closed or open spaces, as well as the fear of loneliness, etc.

Social phobias

Here are collected all the fears associated with the pathological horror of being in front of other people: fear of speaking in public, unfamiliar society, exams, large crowds, and so on. nine0005

Fear of people

Inexplicable horror can be caused by people of a certain profession, nationality, status, gender, sexual orientation, age, appearance, etc.

Fear of disease (nosophobia)

Any sane person avoids disease by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, taking prescribed vitamins and medications on time, but for some, concern for their well-being goes beyond reasonable limits and develops into an irrational pursuit of health. More and more people in our time are subject to the fear of cancer (carcinophobia). nine0005

Thanatophobia

- fear of death. Probably, we are all afraid of dying to some extent, but thanatophobes experience constant panic and anxiety, which provokes the occurrence of neurosis and prolonged depression in them.

Fear of states

Any person experiences various emotions and understands that these experiences are natural. Some are so afraid of being in a certain state (impoverished, bankrupt, getting rich) that they experience panic attacks. This also includes the fear of experiencing certain emotions, the fear of old age, failure, etc. nine0005

Fear of action

The anticipation or performance of some action entails an inexplicable fear. It can be a fear of dancing, singing, cooking, studying, performing, and more.

Fear of places

We often avoid certain places where we once experienced negative emotions (morgue, night cemetery). People who are prone to this group of phobias, from the mere thought of some place (elevator, roof, church, theater) can experience horror and dizziness. nine0005

Fear of substances

A person with this disorder experiences uncontrollable panic to the point of insanity at the mention or sight of some substance. The most common phobias of this type are methylophobia (fear of alcohol), pharmacophobia (fear of drugs), amatophobia (fear of dirt) and cibophobia (fear of food).

Fear of objects

Fear of specific objects often arises after negative situations with these objects that have taken place in life (fear of sharp objects, mirrors, weapons, etc. ). In addition, this type of phobia also includes fear of a certain color, size or shape of objects. nine0005

Zoophobia

A fairly large group of horror in front of a certain type of animal. Any person has a fear of wild or aggressive representatives of the animal world, but we are unlikely to experience horror in the zoo or at the mere thought of a certain animal.

Fear of mysticism

Many go into the world of mysticism, not finding themselves in ordinary real life. Fear of committing sin, God's punishment, fear of magicians, sorcerers, holy places - only a small part of the fertile mystical soil for the emergence of phobias. nine0005

Fear of natural phenomena

Horror and helplessness experienced before the destructive phenomena of nature is considered the result of genetic memory. Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes are really dangerous, and so far man has not learned to fully cope with them. However, there are a huge number of phobias associated with quite ordinary and harmless phenomena: wind, snow, fog, moon, sunlight, water, and so on.

This is far from a complete classification of phobic disorders, since a person can experience panic and fear in front of any objects or phenomena, not only existing in life, but even imaginary. nine0005

Experienced psychotherapists will help you cope with any kind of phobias, the main thing is not to be ashamed of your problem and seek professional help in time.

Fears (phobias)

Fears (phobias, simple phobias) are, as it were, an integral part of the personality of an anxious and suspicious structure and represent a fear of any objects, animals, insects:

eichmophobia - fear of sharp objects,
arachnophobia - fear of spiders,
herpetophobia - fear of snakes,
glenophobia - fear of the look of a doll,

or special situations:

agoraphobia - fear of open spaces,
anthropophobia - fear of people, crowds,
- incl. syphilophobia,
- strokeophobia,
- infarctophobia,
- cancerophobia,
- cardiophobia,
hypsophobia - fear of heights,
homocidophobia - fear of committing murder,
dental phobia - fear of dental intervention,
dermatophobia - fear of contracting a skin disease,
claustrophobia - fear of closed spaces,
maniophobia - fear of insanity,
mysophobia - fear of pollution,
monophobia - fear of being alone,
nosophobia - fear of injury, incurable disease, infection,
oxyphobia - fear of sharp objects,
pettophobia - fear of society,
sitophobia - fear of eating,
scoptophobia - fear of seeming ridiculous, attracting attention to oneself,
suicidophobia - fear of committing suicide,
taphephobia - fear of being buried alive,
phobophobia - fear of fear,
ereitophobia - fear of blushing,

as well as pantophobia - an all-encompassing obsessive fear.

Some of them, such as agoraphobia, are classified into separate diagnostic categories, the rest are combined into a group of simple phobias.

The diagnosis of simple phobia is usually established after exclusion of agoraphobia and social phobia. A simple phobia, as a rule, is not accompanied by a vegetative complex, although suddenly falling into a phobic situation can provoke a panic attack. nine0005

Current and forecast.

Phobias can be observed in a variety of nosological units - from neurotic reactions to schizophrenia. The prognosis in each case is determined individually and directly depends on the nosological form - phobias can either disappear, or gradually compensate, or, on the contrary, progress (mainly within the various forms of schizophrenia).

Treatment.

Of the pharmacological preparations for phobias, benzodiazepine (especially triazole) tranquilizers and blockers of beta-adrenergic receptors are most often used, less often - serotonergic and tricyclic antidepressants, reversible MAO inhibitors.

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