Brian Fallon is associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York. He became interested in hypochondria in the late 1980s after meeting a patient whose fixation on health seemed like a form of obsessive compulsive disorder. Fallon tried the patient on Prozac, which proved a success, and then he carried out a small trial (Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, vol 52, p 457). Fallon is now a leading proponent of treating hypochondria with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, the Prozac class of drugs.
Have you ever been a hypochondriac?
No, but I know what it’s like to worry…
