Short report: Early-onset health anxiety: Insights from a cross-sectional study on adults diagnosed with severe health anxiety 2025 Rask et al

Highlights

• Knowledge of health anxiety before age 18 is limited.
• In adults diagnosed with health anxiety, 32 % reported onset before age 18.
• Early onset was associated with specific negative illness perceptions.
• Early onset was not associated with comorbid psychiatric diagnoses.
• More research is needed on health anxiety in children and adolescence.

Abstract

Objective
The knowledge of early-onset health anxiety (HA) (i.e. onset before age 18) is limited. This retrospective study aimed to investigate 1) the age of onset of HA and 2) potential clinical factors associated with early- compared with late-onset HA in adult patients with severe HA.

Methods
The study sample consisted of 126 adults (aged 20–60 years) diagnosed with severe HA and referred to specialized treatment. All underwent semi-structured diagnostic interviews assessing psychiatric disorders and functional somatic disorders. The interview also included a detailed illness history with a chronological listing of HA symptom onset. Self-reports were obtained on current HA symptoms, illness perceptions, and treatment expectations.

Results
Early onset of HA was reported by 40 participants (32 %, 95 % CI: 24 %–41 %) with a mean age at symptom onset of 11.6 years (SD: 4.0, range: 5–17), and 23 participants reported onset before age 13 (57.5 %). Early-onset HA was significantly associated with more negative perceptions of consequences of symptoms (Cohen's d = 0.41, p = 0.04) and stronger psychological attributions (Cohen's d = 0.33, p = 0.03), and the group with early onset were more often diagnosed with severe functional somatic disorders (Cramer's V = 0.17, p = 0.06) and reported more negative treatment expectations (Cramer's V = 0.17, p = 0 0.06), although these results were non-significant.

Conclusion
Early onset of HA may be common and associated with more negative illness perceptions in adulthood. These results need replication but highlight the need for further research on HA in youth.

Open access

 

"Functional somatic disorders are characterized by persistent and troublesome physical symptoms (e.g. bodily pain, fatigue, heart palpitations or nausea) which can be attributed to not one somatic cause but multiple causal factors (Burton et al., 2020). The diagnosis is established according to the research criteria by Fink & Schröder (2010)."

 

That might be the Danish umbrella term that includes ME/CFS.
Context here: https://www.s4me.info/threads/news-from-scandinavia.647/page-111#post-600032

 

This is a gross mischaracterisation of the study sample (edit: by neglecting to include very relevant additional information):

So there is a lot of sampling bias - the participants had already greed to participate in an ACT trial.

 

Yeah, it's Fink's BDS. I've created a thread for the referenced paper, One single diagnosis, bodily distress syndrome, succeeded to capture 10 diagnostic categories of functional somatic syndromes... 2010 Fink & Schröder