Worried well (medicine)  The worried well are a group of people, not clearly defined, that believe they may be ill despite being in good health. They are distinct from those suffering from hypochondriasis (health anxiety) whose worries about their health are chronic and rise to the level of a psychiatric condition. The "Oxford English Dictionary" records the first use of the term by physician Sidney Garfield in "Scientific American" in 1970 who described a "variable entry mix into medical care consisting of (1) the well, (2) the ‘worried well’, (3) the ‘early sick’ and (4) the sick". "The Times" wrote in 1997 that "Mental health experts..have..nicknamed them the ‘worried well’—too disturbed to sail through life's challenges but too well to warrant medical treatment." The "worried well" are a phenomenon referring to a group of people, not clearly defined, that believe they may be ill despite being in good health. The phenomenon is also known as "worried well syndrome". The worried well are within . In his article titled "Evaluation in an ambulatory medical-care delivery system" published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" in 1976, Sidney Garfield explained how the worried well posed challenges in delivering healthcare. Reasons for presentation may vary. Its negative connotations associated with the perceived feelings of inappropriate use of health services has led to some advocating that the term should not be used. People labelled with the term may present with a worrying symptom that actually has no worrying cause or they may have a real physical illness, or they may have severe health anxiety and therefore a mental illness requiring medical treatment. In his paper in February 2020 in the "British Journal of General Practice", general practitioner Denis Pereira Gray states  For doctors, it is wrong to imply that worry in patients does not matter and is a lesser symptom than others. The implication of the phrase is that pathologically based disease is more important than emotionally based disease, so the phrase reflects old-fashioned ideas about mental health being less important than physical health.