Mindfulness-Based Therapy May Reduce Health Anxiety
July 13th, 2012
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is different from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in that it focuses on learning how to accept emotions rather than transform them. Individuals with health anxiety, also known as hypochondriasis, are often treated with CBT. Because CBT has been an effective therapeutic protocol for anxiety in general, it has been the most common avenue of treatment for people who are experiencing significant fear and worry about their health. Unfortunately, CBT does not always prove effective for individuals with health anxiety. This could be due to the fact that these people worry about changing the content of their thoughts or still harbor fear about physical symptoms they experience. Unlike CBT, MBCT focuses on somatic and bodily experiences. Because many people with hypochondriasis feel their symptoms in their physical body, it would be expected that MBCT would not work as well as more traditional cognitive therapies. To test this hypothesis, Freda McManus of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford in the UK recently led a study comparing traditional unrestricted services (US) and MBCT in a sample of 74 individuals with health anxiety.
McManus evaluated the participants prior to the treatment, at the end of the 8-week intervention, and again 1 year later. Many of the participants had other psychological issues in addition to their health anxiety, and McManus found that both the US and the MBCT had the same effect on these other conditions. Specifically, levels of depression and generalized anxiety were similar for both groups of participants at the end of the intervention. However, the levels of health anxiety were significantly reduced in the MBCT group at the end of the treatment period and even further reduced over time. In fact, more than half of the MBCT group were no longer in the clinical range upon completion of MBCT, and this rose to more than 63% 1 year later. The US group only saw 20% fall below clinical range following treatment and just over 23% at 1-year follow-up. McManus believes that acceptance of emotions, rather than changing emotional content, allows individuals with health anxiety to better cope with the fears and worries associated with their somatic and cognitive symptoms. She added, “This suggests that the MBCT intervention, adapted to focus on symptoms of health anxiety, added significant advantage to US in terms of reducing symptoms of health anxiety.”
Reference:
McManus, F., Surawy, C., Muse, K., Vazquez-Montes, M., Williams, J. M. G. (2012). A randomized clinical trial of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy versus unrestricted services for health anxiety (hypochondriasis). Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0028782
© Copyright 2012 by www.GoodTherapy.org Seattle Bureau - All Rights Reserved. 
-
Find the Right Therapist
-
8 Comments | Click here to leave a comment.
Comments
How am I supposed to accept those emotions and feelings that keep me so anxiety ridden? I want them to go away and not have to embrace them.
If I thought that this is something that I wished to pursue then how would I go about finding a therapist that I thought could help me through these steps effectively?
I don’t get the whole hypochondriac thing.
Who wants to go thru life thinking that they are sick all the time?
Aren’t there better things that life has to offer than different illnesses that you can try on for the day?
@millie:i think what they mean here by acceptance is acceptance of the fact that those feelings have arisen and rather than to try to push them away everytime they come to your mind you could accept their existence and try to cope with them.
it is very encouraging to see the success figures com[pares to the old technique.Hooray!
@Tanner:People do not do that on purpose.Its a disorder n they are quite helpless about it.if anything,v should try n encourage newer methods for helping people with this disorder so that they r spared of the vicious feeling of being unhealthy.
I have read a little more about this since my first post. I think that this could be for me because from what I understand it is an encouragement to accept myself for who I am and not try to change the way I feel, just to help me gain some acceptance and a little control over those feelings. I can learn to love them as a part of me but not let them dominate my life in such a way that I can’t function because of them.
The key is to embrace, through all its discomfort, the anxiety we feel. Avoiding, hiding, covering it up or ignoring only increases how big anxiety can be. MBCT is a wonderful technique for people who can ‘get inside’ their bodies and for those who might feel they can’t, CBT could be the way to go. I prefer to offer clients an option so they can choose which method works best for them.
I use attachment-based approaches in all my work and have found that neurofeedback cuts straight to the heart of dysregulation. Once that happens, attachment psychotherapy is much more successful in healing broken bonds and emotional upsets in close, intimate relationships.
Leave a Reply
By commenting you acknowledge acceptance of GoodTherapy.org's Terms and Conditions of Use.