As coronavirus spreads, anxiety spreads faster

When Anise Fernandez first heard about coronavirus, she wasn’t very concerned. But as cases popped up across the U.S., the 19-year-old panicked and was overcome by shallow breathing and shaking hands.

“When I realized it was spreading, my reaction was to text my mom and tell her I felt nervous about it and to look up symptoms and ways to avoid contracting the virus,” the Chicago woman said. “I think that because the spread of the virus occurred so quickly and there have already been cases in the U.S., I felt that it was a potentially very serious situation.”

Fernandez has health anxiety — sometimes called hypochondria — and for many who deal with the condition, their symptoms have been made worse by coronavirus’ spread.

“My anxiety peaked this past Sunday night — complete attack, night sweats, rapid heart rate, overwhelming fear and stomach cramps,” said Kassandra Leonard, 27, who lives in Arizona where a case was confirmed Jan. 26. “I was convinced I had a fever and took my temperature multiple times; of course, no fever.”

Health anxiety is fairly common, affecting 3% to 6.5% of all people; that goes up to nearly one in 10 people if you include obsessive-compulsive disorders revolving around illnesses, said Karen Lynn Cassiday, owner of the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago.

People with health anxiety often fixate on particular illnesses, like cancer, Cassiday said. Then, they try to adjust their environment to reduce their risk of getting it.

“Some [people with health anxiety] will do an entire body scan if they’re willing to pay out of pocket, and a week later be miserable because what if they missed something or now something cancerous is starting to grow in their body,” she said.

Those fears can be amplified when public health concerns break out.

“Anytime there are media reports about ‘new’ or ‘exotic’ illnesses, we start to receive numerous calls and emails from people who are excessively anxious about the perceived threat that these conditions pose,” said Tom Corboy, executive director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles.

The coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan, China, has infected over 37,000 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

There have been 12 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S., according to CDC statistics released Friday. That includes two patients in Illinois, a husband and wife from Chicago who were discharged from a suburban hospital Friday and moved into home isolation.

Other confirmed cases are in Wisconsin, Washington, Massachusetts, California and Arizona, according to the CDC.

Symptoms include shortness of breath, fever and coughing, like those typically associated with the common cold or flu.

“Lots of people are gonna get a cold while this goes on, and 99.99% won’t have coronavirus,” said Timothy Scarella, associate program director of BIDMC/Harvard Psychiatry Residency. “But when they go to doctor with a cough, they’ll ask, ‘How do you know? Coronavirus comes with a cough, right?’”

Despite repeated assurance from both the CDC and Chicago Department of Public Health that coronavirus’ health risk to the general public remains low, the virus possesses several characteristics that might make it more anxiety-inducing than other similar illnesses, like the classic flu, Cassiday said.

“Every report you hear says doctors and disease specialists don’t really understand — don’t understand the capacity compared to SARS,” she said. “Anyone who remembers SARS remembers it had a high death rate — cities and borders shut down. We don’t have a vaccine for it; combine that with we only have palliative care, no definitive way to reduce or contain and we don’t understand — it induces massive anxiety.”

She added when humans get anxiety signals, they’re hardwired to perceive it as important; people perceive danger much quicker than happiness and safety. Plus, the brain struggles to distinguish between what fear is imagined and what is real.

“If your mind is thinking of something frightening, your body will feel the same way — just as if a grizzly bear is staring you down and is gonna charge you,” Cassiday said. “When we hear about the sick people and the quarantine around the Wuhan area, our brains and bodies go, ‘Oh my gosh, it feels so real; it feels even more necessary to talk to more people, read anything I find on the internet.’ But you’re never going to get a definitive source that will say this will never happen to you.”

A key difference between health anxiety and plain anxiety is the inability to be reassured. While someone generally worried about their health might stop being fearful after a doctor says there’s no need to worry, a person who struggles with health anxiety cannot.

“It’s hard for people with health anxiety to realize that the person they need to see isn’t a physician, but rather someone for their mental health,” Scarella said.

The best way to deal with anxiety surrounding coronavirus, Cassiday suggested, is to consider the worst-case scenario — like scenes from scary movies featuring pandemics or dying young.

“A moment will come when you realize: ‘Why am I worrying about this?’” Cassiday said. “It might even seem humorous to you, and you’ll be able to let go; the thoughts won’t have that sticky Velcro quality.”