Does medical school cause health anxiety and worry in medical students? Gurminder Singh, Matthew Hankins & John A Weinman OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate the self-reported experience of health anxiety and worry in medical students compared with control subjects. It was hypothesised that medical students would experience more health anxiety as a conse- quence of being exposed to medical education, compared to students who are not routinely exposed to such knowledge. DESIGN The design was cross-sectional. SETTING Participants were recruited from London University (Guy’s, King’s & St Thomas’ School of Medicine and King’s College). PARTICIPANTS Medical students (n ¼ 449) and non-medical students (n ¼ 485) were recruited across Years 1–4. Questionnaires relating to health anxiety and worry were completed at the end of their lectures. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Health anxiety was measured using a questionnaire known as the Health Anxiety Questionnaire (HAQ). Worry was assessed using the Anxious Thoughts Inventory (ANTI). RESULTS Health anxiety was significantly lower in medical students in Years 1 and 4 than in controls (P ¼ 0.017 and P < 0.001, respectively). Worry was significantly lower in the medical students in all years of study. CONCLUSIONS Medical students are not a cohort of preselected health-anxious people, nor are they ÔworriersÕ. Medical education at a clinical level was shown to mitigate health anxiety in the medical stu- dent population. KEYWORDS education, medical, undergraduate; anxiety disorders ⁄ *psychology; attitude to health; students, medical ⁄ *psychology; questionnaires; cross-sectional study; England. Medical Education 2004; 38: 479–481 doi:10.1046/j.1365-2929.2004.01813.x INTRODUCTION The idea that medical students experience ground- less fears and symptoms as a consequence of being exposed to medical education has become known as Ômedical studentsÕ disease’. 1 A central premise to this ÔconditionÕ is that the demands placed upon the medical student ) arising from examinations and pace of study ) result in greater emotional stress experienced by the student. 2 This in turn fosters a heightened self-awareness of the student’s own bodily state. S ⁄ he attaches to any symptoms an undeserved importance of a fearsome or catastrophic kind, usually modelled after a patient who has been seen during clinic or studied during lectures, and conse- quently becomes anxious about his ⁄ her health. Early studies that gave rise to this notion of medical students as ÔhypochondriacsÕ reported incidence rates of 70)79% in the medical student population. 1 However, these studies lacked controls, were small in sample size and also employed diagnostic criteria of a less than stringent nature. One previous study 3 found non-significant differences between medical students and controls, and a very recent study 4 reported significantly higher anxiety ratings among medical students in the early stages of training compared to controls. Inconsistent findings in the literature arise out of methodological limitations and discrepancies between studies. 3,4 undergraduate medical education Psychology Unit, Guy’s, King’s & St. Thomas’ School of Medicine, London, UK Correspondence: Gurminder Singh, Guy’s, King’s & St. Thomas’ School of Medicine, Psychology Unit, 5th Floor Thomas Guy House, Guy’s Campus, London SE1 9RT, UK. Tel 00 44 794 724 4194; Fax: 00 44 207 955 2727; E-mail: gurminder.singh@kcl.ac.uk Ó Blackwell Publishing Ltd MEDICAL EDUCATION 2004; 38: 479–481 479