Quiz Section 4 – Case Study 6

Andrea’s disorder is interesting in that its roots (for her) go back as far as the age of 10. I was surprised to hear that at this age, she had a “sudden awareness of [her] own mortality,” a notion that seems rather mature for a 10-year-old. If she was having those feelings at such a young age, I also wonder why it took 34 years or so for her feelings to develop into hypochondriasis. One of the side notes, however, says that this it is common for patients to develop hypochondriasis in young adulthood. Any thoughts as to why Andrea had such a delayed onset? Also, concerning Andrea’s exposure treatment, I was surprised to see the effectiveness of the listing exercise compared to the failed visualization exercise. I understand that different treatments will work better for different clients, but it was interesting to see that Andrea’s list of possible illness fears worked even better than visualizing her actual suffering. (She said that the visualization exercise just seemed “artificial,” which is a little ironic considering then nature of her disease.) Andrea did, however, seem to overcome her problem fairly quickly with just the one main technique. Potential Daddy?