hiv and ocd or is anxity.

Hello. I'm always afraid of getting HIV.  I don't do drugs nor unprotected sex. but I get scared all the time.  I went to the dentist and I can't stop thinking that the tools infected me.  HIV experts told me that its zero risk.  And.   Asked me To seek professional help.  I just keep on taking my temperature.   4 times a day.  And when I go get tested, I wounded about the needle they tested me with.   Please help

[Ashish Mittal, MD]

Dear dave640 ,

Thanks for your query.

I appreciate your efforts to seek medical advice in so much distress.
As has already been explained to you by experts, there is no risk of HIV transmission in the situations that you describe. Considering your continued worry, there are multiple possibilities which need to be ruled out through detailed interview by a psychiatrist in the following order:

•     OCD
•     Hypochondriasis
•     Generalised anxiety disorder

All these disorders come in the spectrum of anxiety disorders.  Common symptoms of anxiety are nervousness, restlessness, mild irritability, excessive worry regarding own wellbeing and health, easy fatigability, muscle spasm, tremor, heaviness in body, palpitation, sleep difficulty and dry mouth. Many of your complaints match with these. Hence, I think that you may need treatment for anxiety. It is not clear if you have received any treatment for this in the past.

As you are having multiple symptoms a combined treatment in the form of “exposure and response prevention (ERP)” along with drug therapy should be best in your case. For drug therapy, two types of medicines are generally used. Benzodiazepines are used for immediate relief of anxiety and most commonly SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are used for long term relief. SSRIs take around 3-4 weeks to show its effect and ERP therapy also takes few weeks to show its effect. I recommend that you seek the help of a psychiatrist and discuss these treatment options.

Hope that this information helps and hope that you will get better soon.

Thank you for using MedHelp's "Ask an Expert" Service, where we feature some of world's renowned medical experts in their fields. Millions have benefitted from our service to get personalized advice for them and for their loved ones.

Best Regards,
Dr. Ashish Mittal

[dave640]

Medhelp has no experts ?

[tgrilias]

Man even if the previous patient before you had HIV and the dentist did not sterilized his equipment (which is a 1/1000000000000000000000 chances) :
the HIV dies after some minutes when is coming in touch with the environment and has not yet found a host...so...Do not worry man , you are not having HIV..BUT if you want just to see it your self wait 2 months and do an ELISA.