(Web Desk) - People who experience serious anxiety about their own health are likely to die before their peers, a study finds. Hypochondriasis, also described as illness anxiety disorder, is a widely overlooked but serious condition where someone believes they have a severe health condition despite not having any symptoms.
In many cases, a person may misinterpret regular body functions as symptoms of a serious condition.
The Swedish researchers who conducted the new study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, described it as “a prevalent, yet underdiagnosed psychiatric disorder.”
“To our knowledge, this was the first study to examine the causes of death among individuals with clinically diagnosed hypochondriasis,” they continued.
For their research, the team gathered data from around 45,000 people, including 4,000 who were diagnosed with hypochondriasis between 1977 and 2020.
At the start of the study period, the average participant was around 35 years old.
Across the study period, 268 people with hypochondriasis died, compared to 1,761 of the 41,000 people without the condition.
The Swedish team found that there were 8.5 deaths for every 1,000 cumulative years lived by participants, compared to 5.5 in the control group.
This represents a 54% increased risk of death among the people with hypochondriasis.
When controlling for outside variables, such as socioeconomic factors and pre-existing conditions, a person with hypochondriasis was 69% more likely to die over the study period than their peers.
They also died at an earlier age. Hypochondriasis patients died at age 70 on average, compared to an average age of death of 77 among their peers.
A majority of this increase was caused by “unnatural” causes, such as accidents and injuries.
The most staggering difference was in suicide rates, as people with hypochondriasis were 314% more likely to die by suicide than their peers.
“To our knowledge, the risk of suicide in this group had not been previously quantified,” the researchers said.
They did not speculate about why this might be the case, though say doctors should be more aware of patients with hypochondriasis who have depression or anxiety.
There was also a 60% increase in mortality risk for natural causes, such as infections and disease. Heart disease and lung issues were the most to blame.
While researchers could not nail down an exact cause here either, they speculate the increase could be linked to anxiety, stress, substance abuse and other lifestyle factors.