Health anxiety, hypochondria, illness anxiety disorder: which is it?
If you've been called a hypochondriac, told you might have illness anxiety disorder, and read about health anxiety online, you're not confused; the terminology genuinely changed underneath you. Here's the map: four terms, counting somatic symptom disorder, and one loop underneath them all.
Every research claim on this page links to its primary, citable source (DOI or publisher). Last reviewed: July 2026.
The four terms
Health anxiety
Umbrella term (research & UK usage)Persistent worry about having or developing a serious illness, held together by checking, reassurance-seeking, and intolerance of uncertainty. Not a formal diagnosis itself; the term researchers and UK clinicians use for the whole pattern.
Hypochondriasis / hypochondria
Retired in DSM-5 (2013); kept in ICD-11The historical diagnosis. The DSM-5 removed it, partly because the word had become an insult that stopped people seeking help. The WHO's ICD-11 still lists hypochondriasis, classified alongside obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.
Illness anxiety disorder (IAD)
DSM-5 diagnosisOne of the two diagnoses that replaced hypochondriasis: high anxiety about having or acquiring a serious illness, with no physical symptoms or only mild ones. Roughly a quarter of people previously called hypochondriacal fit here.
Somatic symptom disorder (SSD)
DSM-5 diagnosisThe other replacement: one or more distressing physical symptoms plus excessive thoughts, feelings, or behaviours around them. The symptoms are real; the diagnosis is about how much the response to them takes over.
Why "hypochondriac" was retired
When the American Psychiatric Association revised its diagnostic manual in 2013, it dropped hypochondriasis (DSM-5, 2013). Part of the reasoning was clinical: the old category mixed people with prominent physical symptoms and people whose distress was mostly anticipatory, and the two groups need somewhat different care. Part was plainer than that: "hypochondriac" had become a playground insult. A label that makes people hide the problem is a bad label for a treatable condition (Scarella et al., 2019).
The WHO went a different way: the ICD-11 kept hypochondriasis as a diagnosis but moved it in with obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, recognising how much the condition runs on intrusive thoughts and compulsive checking rather than on beliefs about the body alone.
Why the label matters less than the loop
Whichever name fits, the engine underneath is the same: a sensation or a thought gets flagged as a threat, checking or reassurance quiets it for a moment, and the doubt comes back louder. The relief never quite lasts. That loop, not the label, is what treatment targets.
It's also why the evidence for cognitive behavioural therapy holds across the old and new categories, with large and durable reductions in symptoms (Cooper et al., 2017). You don't need to settle which diagnosis you'd get before starting the work on the loop.
This page is for information, not diagnosis. If you want a formal assessment, a GP or a mental health professional is the right route. If you're in crisis, see crisis support.
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