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CBT reduced generalized, health anxiety better than standard care

Results from a randomized trial demonstrate that patients with health anxiety who received cognitive-behavioral therapy experienced a greater reduction in both health and generalized anxiety compared with controls, and improvements persisted for 2 years.

The multicenter United Kingdom study included 444 patients aged 16 to 75 years with health anxiety attending secondary care cardiac, endocrine, gastroenterological, neurological and respiratory medicine clinics.

Patients were randomly assigned five to 10 sessions of adapted cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT-HA; n=219) conducted by hospital-based therapists or standard care (n=225). The primary endpoint was the change in health anxiety symptoms at 1 year, as measured by the Health Anxiety Inventory; 205 patients in the CBT-HA group and 212 in the control group were included in this analysis. The secondary endpoint was the equivalence of total health and social care costs over 2 years, according to the study.

Patients in the CBT-HA group experienced a 2.98-point greater improvement in health anxiety at 1 year vs. patients in the control group (95% CI, 1.64-4.33). Additionally, normal levels of health anxiety were documented among twice as many patients in the CBT-HA group vs. the control group (13.9% vs. 7.3%; OR=2.15; 95% CI, 1.09-4.23).

At 6 months and 2 years, similar differences were observed, including reduced general anxiety and depression.

The cost of the treatments was not equivalent at 2 years, but the difference was nonsignificant (P=.848), according to the study.

"Before this study we had no evidence that health anxiety in medical settings could be successfully treated," researchers wrote. "As health professionals with no previous training in this treatment have been shown in this study to be successful practitioners, this treatment could be generalized easily to hospital settings."

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.