Archive for Swine Flu
OCD & Anxiety: The Year 2009 in Review
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and anxiety were in the news throughout 2009. Some news was good, some bad, and some flat-out ugly. Here are our votes for the top stories of the year related to OCD, Social Anxiety, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), Trichotillomania, Phobias, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): › Continue reading
OCD and the Swine Flu – Part 2
As summer ends, students return to school, and flu-season appears on the horizon, the drumbeat of panic about Swine flu is starting to increase again. Yesterday (August 25, 2009), the CNN website had a headline that read: “Swine flu could cause up to 90,000 U.S. deaths”. On the same day, the Los Angeles Times ran a story that reported that 20% to 40% of the US population could get Swine flu this year, and up to 2 million Americans could be hospitalized as a result. › Continue reading
OCD and the Swine Flu
The past few months have seen an avalanche of news stories on the swine flu. And as usual, whenever the media focuses on a “new” disease, some of our OCD and Hypochondria clients find themselves obsessing about getting that disease. This was true of Hantavirus in the mid-1990’s, Mad Cow disease in 2001, and SARS in 2003. Do you remember the hundreds of news stories about these rare diseases? One thing united most of these stories – irrational, exaggerated fear in response a relatively low-level threat. That isn’t to say that nobody died from these diseases, but that the fear far exceeded the threat. › Continue reading
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