Health Anxiety Treatment Scotland

Understanding health anxiety

Health anxiety can be difficult for onlookers to digest, as medical assurance or direction can usually provide the average person with relief. However, for someone with a health anxiety diagnosis, very little confidence is placed despite the medical opinions provided by medical professionals.

The cause of health anxiety is usually linked to trauma. Whether someone has personally experienced a significant illness, has been misdiagnosed or mistreated, has witnessed a loved one suffer, or has encountered a close unexpected death, psychological trauma is usually the catalyst.

Through those experiences, the brain is tuned to overthink, worry, question, to look for second, third or even fourth opinions obsessively. Through such actions, symptoms of health anxiety can be draining, frantic and unhealthy, in fact placing even further concern on the initial trigger.

It is very important to understand health anxiety, as a vicious circle can materialise. Worrying about health concerns in fact places greater pressure on the body and mind, which is enabled for the long-term, will result in even greater health issues such as substance abuse.

It’s easy to see how minimal anxiety over health can develop into a chronic issue, which is why health anxiety treatment should be completed as soon as possible.

While concentrating on our health and well-being is important, those who suffer from health anxiety, unfortunately, cannot direct their focus elsewhere, making it difficult to maintain routine, responsibilities and quality of life.

The presence of symptoms can aggravate further, causing chronic vulnerabilities. Looking beyond the hypochondriac branding is therefore encouraged, to promote the normalisation of health anxiety treatment.

Symptoms of health anxiety

Many symptoms of health anxiety, especially those of a physical nature do reflect the signs of common anxiety. However, there are some focused health anxiety symptoms that do direct a clear diagnosis.

• OCD behaviours around life in general
• Constant worry about physical and mental health
• Spending time researching and reading up about illness
• Disregarding all medical recommendations and opinions
• Needing reassurance from others
• The feeling of depression and anxiety throughout everyday life

Healthy levels of worry are understandable, as we look to protect ourselves and those around us. Yet, displaying the above symptoms are signs of health anxiety and its compulsive characteristics. In this instance, specialist health anxiety treatment will be a recommendation to help you recover.

Health anxiety help at Nova Recovery Scotland

Mental health anxiety is a complex, downplayed disorder down to the branding of a hypochondriac. However, it can be a severe condition which can be debilitating.

It’s dangerous to enable the symptoms of health anxiety as, as we’ve shared above, a vicious circle can materialise, making it harder to rehabilitate.

It’s understandable that you will not be voluntarily enabling such a response. Yet if you are extremely worried about your health, experience drug or alcohol addiction or have experienced some previous trauma, reaching out for addiction and anxiety help at a treatment centre such as ours is recommended.

At Nova Recovery, we are a private, specialist recovery centre, focusing on co-occurring addiction and mental health rehabilitation. We offer personalised programmes of addiction and health anxiety treatment to help our clients understand, manage and move forward from their symptoms.

As every client is different, we vouch for personalisation through our treatment recommendations.

Worry can consume us, especially our health and the well-being of those around us. Do not feel ashamed for fixating on such worry. It is however important that if you’re experiencing symptoms reach out for support, as help is available.