How The Pandemic Has Influenced The Development Of Hypochondria And OCD
Although the term “mental illness” can lead to misunderstandings, the truth is that psychological disorders do not arise in isolation within the brain; They do not appear simply from an imbalance of hormones, neurons or metabolic processes in the human body, but have biological, behavioral and social causes. Our environment and the way we interact with it influences people’s mental health, and much more than it seems.
That is why psychotherapy professionals have not been surprised to see to what extent the coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on the appearance of psychopathologies; In times of crisis it is normal for this to happen, and in the case of these months marked by COVID-19, several have occurred at the same time: a health crisis, another social and political one, and another economic one.
Therefore, in this article we will focus on analyzing How the pandemic has exposed us more to two specific disorders: hypochondria and OCD. Let’s start by seeing what its characteristics are separately.
OCD, acronym for “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder”, is a psychopathology characterized by two main elements that are reflected in its name: obsessions, which are mental images or intrusive thoughts that appear over and over again, generating a high level of discomfort. in the person; and compulsions, which are sequences of very specific actions that the person feels the need to perform each time to try to mitigate (in the short term) the harmful influence of obsessions and allow their attention to be displaced to something else.
That is While the first element generates instant discomfort and “invades” the person’s consciousness, preventing them from thinking about anything else, the second provides a momentary remedy.although in the long run it only aggravates the problem because it gives even more importance to the obsessions and the person does not feel protected until they carry out the compulsion every time.
For its part, hypochondria (sometimes more officially called “somatic symptom disorder”, although the latter term is broader and also addresses other similar disorders) is a psychopathological disorder in which the person develops strong anxiety when faced with unfounded belief that you suffer from at least one illness.
In cases like this, the degree of discomfort is so strong that not even a visit to the doctor in which he or she is given a check-up and is assured that everything is fine serves to reassure the person in the medium and long term, since the person quickly returns. to interpret certain experiences as a sign that they have developed a pathology, usually severe. So, hypochondria makes the person very prone to falling into self-diagnosis again and againinterpreting in the most pessimistic way possible all types of sensations or changes in the body whose causes are not well known, and which really do not have to indicate that one is suffering from an illness.
What do these two psychological disorders have in common?
From what we have seen so far, OCD and hypochondria seem to be two clearly distinguishable disorders; and to a large extent they are. However, as is often the case with mental disorders, they overlap in several of their characteristics, and the main one is the ease with which they lead the person who suffers from it to experience obsessive-type thoughts.
That is, in both hypochondria and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, we are more vulnerable to developing a vicious cycle of anxiety and intrusive thoughts that overwhelm us emotionally. In the case of OCD, these can consist of all kinds of disturbing memories or imaginary situations that we assume are predictions of what could happen, and in many cases memory and imagination mix, leading us to exaggerate events that really occurred. In the case of hypochondria, intrusive thoughts usually have more to do with the earthly world of sensations, changes in skin color, joint discomfort…
In any case, in these two psychological alterations The person “learns”, without realizing it, to attract to his consciousness a series of mental contents that make him feel very bad.and it is customary to resort to a very specific type of momentary relief: in OCD compulsions that must be repeated systematically without departing from the guidelines set by previous occasions (for example, scratching the right ear four times and the nose ten times, in this order), and in hypochondria, self-checking behaviors and searches on the Internet or in medical books to try to self-diagnose and better understand the supposed illness one is suffering from, as well as the adoption of all types of extreme precautions to prevent the problem gets worse.
How has the pandemic influenced the appearance of these psychological disorders?
The coronavirus pandemic has given rise to a context that is the ideal breeding ground for psychopathologies such as OCD and hypochondria.
On the one hand, a media bombardment of sensational or biased news that has focused on the most tragic aspects or worrying about the COVID-19 crisis to capture the attention of viewers; On the other hand, periods of confinement that have left people vulnerable to emotional imbalances with fewer social support resources to face this very complicated situation, having to remain in relative social isolation; Furthermore, the fear of infecting and being infected, based on a microscopic source of danger that, being invisible to the eye, leaves a great margin of action for ambiguity and anticipatory anxiety; and finally, an economic crisis that has pushed many families to the limit, causing many citizens in a precarious situation to have had to remain in a “state of alert” and trying to perform at their best without interruptions, to minimize the risk of possible complications. due to dismissal, bankruptcy of the family business, etc.
And to all this we would have to add the confusion that has reigned for months, given that since the successive versions of the coronavirus are new pathogens about which little was known, contradictions in health measures, in politicians’ statements, etc. have been frequent. This feeling that no one is clear about how to stay safe from COVID-19 has shifted the total responsibility of protecting themselves and their families to individuals, which has put a lot of pressure on large sectors of the population.
Thus, people may develop hypochondria as a response to the need to be alert to the first symptoms of the disease, and others may develop OCD to avoid the risk of contagion as much as possible and even to purge the feeling of guilt for, perhaps, having infected other people in the past.
All of these experiences are linked to the fear of contracting COVID-19 and/or infecting loved ones, and at the same time, they predispose people to desperately search for expectations and certainties about how the virus works and the emotional imbalances of fear of the pandemic. . And unfortunately, disorders like hypochondria and OCD, Although they generate great discomfort, they provide a series of references to “position oneself” in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. and its consequences: knowing approximately what the risk of suffering a tragedy is if something is not done to avoid it (very high), generating guidelines to regulate immediate discomfort, feeling of being relatively “prepared”, etc.
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I am a General Health Psychologist and in my practice we serve people of all ages with problems such as generalized anxiety, OCD, low self-esteem, depression, hypochondria and grief due to the loss of loved ones. The sessions can be done both in person and through the online therapy modality.
