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Article: New Directions in Health Anxiety: Introduction to the Special Issue
- Article from:
- Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy
- Article date:
- July 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Springer Publishing Company 2008. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Health concerns are universal-why shouldn't they be? Good health is vital to our survival, and threats to physical well-being are virtuously ubiquitous. We can hardly turn on the evening news or peruse the cable TV lineup without finding accounts of new disease epidemics and information about the latest food or product recalls. Health concern can also be highly adaptive. If we were not at least sometimes concerned about our health, we would probably not take good enough care of ourselves to survive as a species. Empirical research bears this out. In one study, 61% of college students reported intrusive thoughts about their own health (Freeston et al., 1994). Among most people, these health ...