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Does Thinking about Personal Health Risk Increase Anxiety?
Anne-Marie Lister1, Sibylle Rode, Andrew Farmer
1University of Oxford, UK.
Journal of Health Psychology
|November 25, 2011
Summary
Completing a health questionnaire assessing personal risk factors significantly increased health anxiety related to specific diseases like Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes. General anxiety levels remained unaffected by this health assessment.
Area of Science:
- Health Psychology
- Psychological Measurement
Background:
- Health anxiety is a significant concern in public health.
- Standardized questionnaires are often used to assess health-related factors.
- The impact of self-referential health assessments on anxiety requires further investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of a self-referential health questionnaire on health anxiety.
- To determine if focusing on personal health risks influences anxiety levels.
- To compare the effects of health-focused versus personality-focused questionnaires.
Main Methods:
- Randomly assigned participants to either a health or personality questionnaire condition.
- Measured general anxiety, and disease-specific anxiety (Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke, Diabetes) before and after the intervention.
- Utilized analysis of covariance to compare anxiety changes between groups.
Main Results:
- Participants completing the health questionnaire showed significantly increased anxiety regarding Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes.
- No significant changes in general anxiety were observed in either group.
- The health-focused assessment heightened disease-specific anxiety compared to the personality assessment.
Conclusions:
- Self-referential health assessments focusing on personal risk factors can inadvertently increase disease-specific anxiety.
- Current measurement procedures in health psychology may influence psychological states.
- Further research is needed to understand the duration of these anxiety effects.
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