Heart attacks? Cancer? No, the West's greatest health problem is anxiety - The Independent on Sunday 20th April 2008

The writer Patricia Pearson talks about the fears that devoured her life Patricia Pearson, author of A Brief History of Anxiety... Yours and Mine, worries a lot. "I fret about everything and nothing. After 9/11, a friend died and that combination had the effect of turning me into a hypochondriac. I would lie awake at night listening to a gurgling sound in my abdomen convinced I had cancer." On another occasion, she ordered 12 containers of freeze-dried vegetables after an American report warned of a possible flu epidemic and advised stockpiling food.

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