A mental health epidemic playing out in the medical community. 

Health anxiety is more than ordinary worry about being sick. It is a pattern of intense fear and preoccupation about one’s health, bodily sensations, or the possibility of serious illness, and it shapes how people interpret symptoms, tolerate medical uncertainty, and use healthcare.

It is far more common than most people realize. Research suggests roughly 5% of adults are affected, and in one large study of medical outpatients, about 1 in 5 screened positive for elevated health anxiety. It appears in primary care, specialty clinics, emergency departments, and therapy offices, often under another name and often unrecognized.

For many patients, care becomes a revolving door of appointments, tests, and short lived relief followed by renewed doubt. For others, fear keeps them from seeking care at all. Both patterns take a toll on patients, families, clinicians, and the healthcare system. Health anxiety can also exist alongside real medical illness and overlap with conditions like OCD and panic, which is why it can be so easy to miss and so hard to untangle.

Medical professionals are often the first to see it. Mental health professionals are often the ones who can treat it. When both understand the cycle, patients get care that goes beyond reassurance.

What is significance/ impact (stats) (medical and mental health)?