A man with hypochondria attempts to understand his disorder:
“Eleven years ago, when he was still a medical resident at Columbia University, Fallon was asked to help a man who was convinced, despite medical results to the contrary, that he was saddled with a brain tumor. ‘He tried Prozac, and it made a dramatic change,’ Fallon says. ‘He went from irritable and hostile to grateful and happy that something was helping him. I thought, ‘Wow, this is fascinating.’ Because at that point so little was known.’
“The use of Prozac and similar medications is now under formal study. Columbia’s Fallon and Arthur Barsky, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, are conducting the largest trial ever undertaken of the disorder. They are enrolling 264 hypochondriacs in a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial comparing cognitive behavioral therapy, Prozac, and a combination of the two. They suspect that CBT and the drug will be equally effective, but that combination therapy will be even more effective for ‘this major public health disorder.’ ‘I don’t know what to expect,’ says Fallon. ‘But it will be very interesting.’”
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