Psychological Interventions for Health Anxiety and Somatic Symptoms

Abstract

Abstract. This study examined the effectiveness of psychological interventions for severe health anxiety (SHA) regarding somatic symptoms (SS) and health anxiety (HA). The databases Web of Science, EBSCO, and CENTRAL were searched on May 15, 2019, May 16, 2019, and August 5, 2019, respectively. Eighteen randomized controlled trials ( N = 2,050) met the inclusion criteria (i.e., hypochondriasis, illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder with elevated HA being assessed with validated interviews; use of standardized outcome measures). Two reviewers independently evaluated the studies’ risk of bias using the Revised Cochrane Risk-of-Bias Tool for randomized trials (RoB-2) tool. Overall, psychological interventions were significantly more effective than waitlist, treatment-as-usual, or placebo post-treatment ( gSS = 0.70, gHA = 1.11) and at follow-up ( gSS = 0.33, gHA = 0.70). CBT outperformed other psychological interventions or pharmacotherapy for HA post-treatment (Hedge’s  gHA = 0.81). The number of sessions did not significantly predict the effect sizes. In sum, psychological interventions were effective for SHA, but the generalizability of the results for SS is limited, because only two high-quality trials contributed to the comparisons.