Recognizing, Understanding, and Overcoming Hypochondria by Carla Cantor

Carla Cantor's long, dark road to hypochondria began when she crashed a car she was driving, killing a friend of hers. She couldn't forgive herself, and a few years later began imagining that she was suffering from lupus. Many years and two hospitalizations later, she wrote this book not only about her experiences, but about hypochondria in general (now more politely referred to as a "somatoform disorder"). No matter what one chooses to call them, psychosomatic disorders--imagined illnesses--present a huge burden to medical systems, and only by taking them seriously can we hope to alleviate their costs. By putting a human face on this often laughed-at syndrome, and by showing ways out of it, Cantor provides a great service not only to "somatizers" and their loved ones, but to the entire healthcare system.

by Gene Weingarten

Colleague Dave Barry's foreword reveals some stylistic similarities: like Barry, Weingarten takes an ordinary--or only slightly odd--situation and pushes it to its limit. There's a fair amount of true medical information scattered amid satire, sidebars, and tongue-in-cheek charts in chapters on hypochondria, the hypochondriac's relationship with physicians, and a range of behaviors, symptoms, and conditions (e.g., headaches, hiccups, heart disease, tumors, ulcers, obesity, smoking, alcoholism, pregnancy, excretion, and "things that can take out an eye"). Weingarten proudly claims a lifetime of hypochondria, a disease abruptly cured several years ago when he was diagnosed with hepatitis C: what doctors call "the next epidemic." So perhaps Weingarten is a post-hypochondriac who recalls the pleasures of imaginary illnesses while coping with all-too-real health problems.  A hilarious book that will laugh the hypochondria right out of you!

A psychiatrist or psychologist is the doctor that can best handle hypochondria.  Talk with your doctor and see if he can refer you to one.