Treating Health Anxiety with CBT - A Step by Step Guide

Health anxiety is a condition that can affect anyone. Those affected by health anxiety have a disproportionate and sometimes obsessive preoccupation with the idea that they - or a loved one including children - are currently (or will be) experiencing a physical illness or medical problem.

"Health anxiety (sometimes called hypochondria) is when you spend so much time worrying you're ill, or about getting ill, that it starts to take over your life."

"You may have health anxiety if you:

1. constantly worry about your health
2. frequently check your body for signs of illness, such as lumps, tingling or pain
3. are always asking people for reassurance that you're not ill
4. worry that your doctor or medical tests may have missed something
5. obsessively look at health information on the internet or in the media
6. avoid anything to do with serious illness, such as medical TV programmes
7. act as if you were ill (for example, avoiding physical activities)

Anxiety itself can cause symptoms like headaches or a racing heartbeat, and you may mistake these for signs of illness."

What will the workshop cover? (Indicative)

1. Illness Anxiety Disorder (DSM-5)
2. Dimensions of Health Anxiety (Salkovskis)
3. Issues in Treatment implementation (Furer)
4. Exposure and Response Prevention
5. Use of Virtual Reality for Health Anxiety
6. Summary and next steps

But how can we help clients who suffer from health anxiety?

This webinar will introduce you to the basics of how to support and treat individuals suffering from distressing unfounded preoccupation with health issues. We will do this by focusing on how we can help clients explore, challenge and change their unhelpful rules and assumptions about health in a supportive and compassionate way. The webinar will also include consideration of excessive parental anxiety about the health of children.

What have previous delegates said about similar workshops?

"It was fun. a very entertaining trainer. Good use of humour.""Loved the multimedia presentation"."Useful professionally and personally. Very enjoyable - lots of takeaway resources""Fun, lively presentation . Two-way experience between the facilitator and the group. Very informative and enjoyable.""Excellent workshop. Informative, interesting, well presented. It was excellent.""Excellent course; excellent presentation; easy to understand"."Good balance of information and lots of useful practical ideas to use. Thank you!""I enjoyed this training and the facilitator was very attentive and engaging with the training"."Clearly a knowledgeable and experienced facilitator. Helpful to be signposted to resources"."Good mix of presentation, discussion and exercises""An engaging workshop with clear practical applications.""Excellent delivery and well explained. Articulate explanations of concepts. Great. Thanks!"

Resources

A full set of slides with extensive clickable links to free online resources, is sent free to all delegates after the event. This also includes references to key sources.

CPD

A CPD Certificate of Attendance confirming 2 hours skills CPD is available free on request to all delegates who attend.

Facilitator

Professor Patrick McGhee is a CBT therapist, psychologist and UK National Teaching Fellow. Educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford, he has completed CPD programmes at Harvard Business School and Ashridge. In 2017 he was a Visiting Fellow/Scholar at the universities of Cornell, Yale and MIT in the USA. He has taught, researched or practised in psychology and therapy for 30 years. His first post was a Research Fellow in Psychiatry and Psychology at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London. He is the author of Thinking Psychologically (Palgrave) and co-editor of Accounting for Relationships (Methuen). He is an occasional columnist for the Guardian, the BBC and the Times Higher. He currently works in private practice in Greater Manchester and Lancashire. He has full accreditation from the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies.

Joining instructions

Joining instructions for the webinar will be sent to participants approximately 48 hours before the event and again just before the start. Please aim to join about 10 minutes before the start of the event to check connections.