“I always imagine the worst”: what is the hypochondria from which Michel Blanc suffered when he died at the age of 72 ?

Actor Michel Blanc died at the age of 72 during the night of Thursday 3 to Friday 4 October. He is said to have succumbed to Quincke's edema according to several media outlets.

On October 4, 2024, French actor Michel Blanc died at the age of 72. Emblematic in Les Bronzés in particular, he left behind millions of fans. In 2010, the actor who played the famous Jean-Claude Dusse explained to Le Figaro: “for a tiny bit of pain, or a new redness, I consult! I always imagine the worst. There is the fear of death behind it…”.

The director specified to Paris Match in 2015: “It is more linked to the heart murmur detected at birth. I was raised in cotton wool. I was constantly told that I was fragile, it does not reassure.” Later in adolescence, it was her mother's cancer that exacerbated a deeply ingrained fear of death “I would wake up and think, “The cancer is spreading, it's affecting her lungs, she's going to die” […] The anxiety of losing a loved one definitely broke the child in me”.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV), hypochondria is a “preoccupation with fear or idea of ​​having a serious illness, based on the individual's misinterpretation of physical symptoms.” Another defining element is that the patient refuses to believe the doctor's diagnosis and is unresponsive to his attempts to reassure him that there is no serious illness.

What are the symptoms ?

The patient fears being affected or developing a serious illness. This fear impairs their social and professional functioning and can cause significant distress and have an impact on family life in particular. Some people repeatedly self-examine themselves (checking the skin for lesions, taking the pulse, examining the throat in the mirror, etc.).

While some patients will have multiple consultations and do not hesitate to change doctors, others are afraid to seek medical advice. Finally, the patient has no or mild somatic symptoms.

According to the MSD manual, “the diagnosis of illness-related anxiety disorder is confirmed if the person continues to be anxious about the illness for at least 6 months, while having no or only mild symptoms, and has been reassured that the medical examination has ruled out the possibility of illness or has identified a mild disorder that does not justify the anxiety”.

What are the treatments ?

According to the same site, the support of a trusted doctor can be useful, especially a general practitioner. Cognitive behavioral therapy seems essential. Taking antidepressants can also help.

“Those around them should not tell hypochondriacs: No, you have nothing! Hypochondria is a real mental illness. We must therefore help them understand that it is not doctors of the body who can help them, but rather shrinks,” explained in 2014 to Le Parisien, Michèle Declerck, psychologist. The difficulty is convincing them to consult a specialist doctor.

A disorder that is not so rare

Renamed illness-related anxiety disorder in the DSM-V – the term hypochondria having been deemed too pejorative – this disorder is not that rare. According to an Ifop survey for Capital Image in 2014, 13% of French people said they feared having an illness or developing one even in the absence of any symptoms. 74% of them said they searched a lot of information about this illness on the internet. 64% of them said that the more they learned about the illness, the more they feared developing it. And 44% said they consulted several doctors and had several tests done to get reassurance.

Note: according to a Swedish study published in December 2023 in the journal Jama Psychiatry, people who suffer from hypochondria have an increased risk of dying from natural or unnatural causes, particularly suicide. The overall mortality rate was higher among people with hypochondria, at 8.5 versus 5.5 per 1,000 person-years (which takes into account the number of people and the length of time they were followed). People with hypochondria died younger than others, at an average age of 70 versus 75. And the number of suicides was multiplied by 4.