Lexic.us

Definition of Hypochondriasis

1. Noun. Chronic and abnormal anxiety about imaginary symptoms and ailments.

Definition of Hypochondriasis

1. n. A mental disorder in which melancholy and gloomy views torment the affected person, particularly concerning his own health.

Definition of Hypochondriasis

1. Noun. (medicine) A mental disorder characterized by excessive fear of or preoccupation with a serious illness, despite medical testing and reassurance to the contrary. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Hypochondriasis

1. [n -DRIASES]

Medical Definition of Hypochondriasis

1. A mental disorder characterised by a preoccupation with bodily functions and the interpretation of normal sensations (such as heart beats, sweating, peristaltic action and bowel movements) or minor abnormalities (such as a runny nose, minor aches and pains or slightly swollen lymph nodes) as indications of highly disturbing problems needing medical attention. Negative results of diagnostic evaluations and reassurance by physicians only increase the patients anxious concern about his health and the patient continues to seek medical attention. It was thought by the ancients to be due to disturbed function of the organs of the upper abdomen. Synonym: hypochondriacal neurosis. This entry appears with permission from the Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology (11 Mar 2008)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Hypochondriasis

Literary usage of Hypochondriasis

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. The American Journal of the Medical Sciences by Southern Society for Clinical Investigation (U.S.) (1889)
"According to his own observations, hypochondriasis may be divided into three ... This second form may be called hypochondriasis with hallucinations of the ..."

2. The Unsound Mind and the Law: A Presentation of Forensic Psychiatry by George W. Jacoby (1918)
"Hystero-hypochondriasis always develops at a rather advanced period of life, in women around the climacterium, and in men about the fiftieth year of life. ..."

3. A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine: Giving the Definition, Etymology and by Daniel Hack Tuke (1892)
"In hypochondriasis there is a feeling of profound illness and a tendency to ... hypochondriasis as met with among the sane does not interfere with the ..."

4. Mental Philosophy: Embracing the Three Departments of the Intellect by Thomas Cogswell Upham (1869)
"Of the mental disease termed hypochondriasis. The seat of the well-known ... This is the fact; and, we never apply the term hypochondriasis to a state of ..."

5. The Principles of Medical Psychology: Being the Outlines of a Course of Lectures by Ernst Feuchtersleben (1847)
"hypochondriasis, as a state of disease, whose description, ... Dubois, in his well-considered work on hypochondriasis, assumes the first cause that we have ..."

6. Elements of Mental Philosophy: Abridged and Designed as a Text-book for by Thomas Cogswell Upham (1854)
"Of intermissions of hypochondriasis, and of its remedies. The mental disease of hypochondriasis is always understood to imply the existence of a feeling of ..."

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