HOW TO AVOID BEING A HYPOCHONDRIAC
March 12th, 2009When one of my non-medical friends learnt that 1 was writing the Reader’s Digest Family Health Guide and Medical Encyclopaedia, he remarked, ‘But don’t you think there’s a danger that it will make some people worry about themselves—that they’ll get to be hypochondriacs who think they have every disease they read about?’
Doctors know that patients do not need to read about actual diseases in order to suffer from imaginary ones. We have all had patients who could invent more ailments than medical science ever dreamt of.
After each health campaign or drive to raise funds for a health organization, doctors are besieged by people who are afraid they have the disease that has been publicized. Campaigns concerned with cancer, tuberculosis, heart disease and high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, rheumatism and arthritis, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and venereal disease give suggestible people something to worry about all year long.
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