Nosophobia is the fear of getting sick. This phobia is particularly disabling when the subjects of this disease implement avoidance strategies. It is possible to cure this phobia through psychological follow-up or hypnosis.

Nosophobia, also called pathophobia, is the fear of contracting an illness. The term nosophobia comes from the Greek ” ours “For illness and” phobos For phobia.

Be careful not to confuse nosophobia with hypochondria. The nosophobe is not sick, and he knows it, but he is obsessed with his desire to maintain good health. Hypochondria is when a person has one or more symptoms. Therefore, the hypochondriac imagines the worst.

Nosophobes therefore fear germs, bacteria and more generally any foreign contact. 

Nosophobes are not afraid of just any disease. They are especially afraid of serious or specific diseases such as cancer or heart disease, infectious diseases such as malaria as well as AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Nosophobia can also be a symptom, that is to say add to a disorder or pathology already present. Thus, one can meet this type of phobia during serious personality disorders, obsessive disorders or social phobias.

The people concerned are mainly people who have experienced trauma in their childhood or who have lost a loved one following an illness. Health professionals believe that people who have an adversarial relationship with their bodies and those of others are more likely to contract this phobia.

But this disease, also called “medical student’s disease”, is also found on the benches of medical schools. Indeed, people who work in a professional environment conducive to contamination are more inclined to develop this phobia.

Nosophobes see the outside world as a risk to their health. Everything is synonymous with bacteria or viruses. Symptoms of the disease are:

• Excessive hygiene 
• Follow-up of preventive treatments in order to protect oneself from any infection and / or disease 
• Obsessive-compulsive disinfection and / or cleaning disorder 
• The excessive and uncontrolled use of disinfectants 
• Waiver or non-attendance of public places 
• Anxiety behaviors

People with this phobia often have medicine cabinets filled with every possible medication imaginable, to be able to alleviate any possible illness. 

In addition to these symptoms, nosophobic people even avoid public transport, public toilets and hospitals, etc. These people develop all kinds of avoidance and contact restriction strategies at all levels. Isolation thus remains the main manifestation of this phobia and the most disabling.

Going through psychotherapy or behavioral therapy is almost mandatory, especially when the phobia becomes disabling.

Other unconventional approaches can also be considered such as: biological decoding of diseases (or biodecoding), NLP. Hypnosis is especially recommended for phobias. During the hypnosis session, the hypnotherapist will set up an adapted protocol to reduce the phobia, or even make it disappear.

It is not always easy for a phobic person to discover and understand the causes of their anxiety disorder. In the majority of cases, nosophobia results from a traumatic situation experienced during childhood. It is therefore impossible to prevent this phobia, if it is not a psychological follow-up following traumatic events, particularly the death of a loved one following an illness.