Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:923-928
Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
The relation between hypochondriasis and age
AJ Barsky, CB Frank, PD Cleary, G Wyshak and GL Klerman
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
OBJECTIVE: This study examined the relation between hypochondriasis and age
while controlling for the possible confounding influences of medical
morbidity, social isolation, and other psychiatric disorder. METHOD:
Consecutive patients attending a general medical clinic on randomly
selected days were screened with a hypochondriasis self-report
questionnaire. Those whose scores exceeded a preestablished cutoff level
and a random sample of those who scored below it completed a research
battery consisting of self-report questionnaires and structured interviews
for DSM-III-R diagnoses of hypochondriasis and other axis I disorders. The
patients' medical records were audited, and their physicians completed
questionnaires about them. The 60 patients who met the DSM-III-R criteria
for hypochondriasis at interview constituted the study group, and 100
patients randomly chosen from among those who scored below the cutoff for
hypochondriasis constituted the comparison group. RESULTS: The
hypochondriacal group was not older than the comparison group.
Hypochondriacal patients aged 65 years and over did not differ
significantly from younger hypochondriacal patients in hypochondriacal
attitudes, somatization, tendency to amplify bodily sensation, or global
assessment of their overall health, even though their aggregate medical
morbidity was greater. The elderly hypochondriacal patients had higher
levels of disability, but this appeared to be attributable to their medical
status rather than to any increase in hypochondriasis. Within the
comparison sample, subjects aged 65 years and over were not more
hypochondriacal than those under 65 years of age. CONCLUSIONS:
Hypochondriasis is found to some degree in all patients and appears to be
unrelated to age.
