Induced Diseases

A person’s erroneous assumption that he has a disease due to third-party suggestion or self-hypnosis. It occurs in individuals of a certain type - anxious, suspicious, always attentive to their feelings, impressionable. Most often it manifests itself in the form of phobias - obsessive fears, which are a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The reason is, as a rule, a vivid impression of the disease, accompanied by a feeling of anxiety: the sight of a seriously ill person, a story or reading about a sudden illness with a tragic outcome, misunderstood words of a doctor (the latter type of V. is called iatrogeny), reading popular literature on medical science. a topic compiled without taking into account the harmful effects on impressionable people. After a short time, a person develops a variety of unpleasant sensations, similar, in his opinion, to the symptoms of a disease that he observed in another person or about which he learned, and the assumption of such a disease in himself. A medical examination does not confirm the presence of the disease, and if the doctor’s explanations do not convince the person, if the state of anxious expectation and fear continues, then his activity is aimed at “establishing the truth.”

He changes doctors, demands specialist consultations, repeated examinations, insists on surgery, and begins self-medication. At the same time reads special. medical literature, and it seems to him that the description of the disease corresponds to what he suffers from. The missing symptoms appear as a result of unconscious self-hypnosis; sensations come into the system and become orderly. At this stage, a person with V. may give the impression of a true patient.

Lack of understanding and sympathy causes decreased mood, sleep and appetite disorders, and general well-being. The situation is aggravated by the fact that in such a state functional disorders of the supposedly diseased organ arise and its activity may actually be disrupted. V. completely takes possession of the patient’s thoughts, new facts are not able to convince him, he sees only what confirms his beliefs and does not take into account what should reassure him. Thus, V. of the heart, liver and other organs are indicated as a mental illness, which should be treated by a psychiatrist.

A patient with V. requires special treatment from others. If at the beginning of the disease it is still possible to challenge assumptions, dissuade and reassure him (often close people know and understand the connection between the impression that frightened a person and the subsequent “illness”), then later, when anxious fears turned out to be stronger than dissuasions, the person’s activity in “establishing the truth” has increased, disbeliefs begin to have an undesirable effect.

The sick person regards them as a manifestation of insensitivity and unloving, becomes embittered, becomes irritable, whiny and angry, and withdraws into himself. At this time, those around them should try to create a calm environment for the patient and convince him, without offending the patient with distrust of his experiences, to consult a psychiatrist due to irritability, anxiety, insomnia, and a drop in production activity. A suggested illness should never serve as a subject of irony; we must not forget that such a patient suffers sincerely, suffers doubly: both from an illness that seems real to him, and from a lack of understanding and help.