Department of Surgery, Medical, Molecular, and Critical Area Pathology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Institute for Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology and Psychotherapy of Florence (IPSICO), Florence, Italy.
Clin Psychol Psychother. 2018 Mar;25(2):263-271. doi: 10.1002/cpp.2159. Epub 2017 Dec 11.
Research has supported the specific role that anxiety sensitivity, health-related dysfunctional beliefs, and metacognitive beliefs may play in the development and maintenance of health anxiety symptoms. However, the role of metacognitive beliefs in health anxiety has only been explored in analogue samples. The aim of this study was to explore for the first time the association between metacognitive beliefs and health anxiety symptoms in a sample of participants who reported having received a diagnosis of severe health anxiety (hypochondriasis) or illness anxiety disorder and test whether these beliefs are significant predictors of health anxiety after controlling for anxiety, depression, anxiety sensitivity, and dysfunctional beliefs. A series of dimensional self-report measures were administered to a large Italian sample (N = 458). At a bivariate level, Beliefs that Thoughts are Uncontrollable had a stronger association with health anxiety than any of the dysfunctional beliefs and anxiety sensitivity subscales. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that Beliefs that Thoughts are Uncontrollable predicted health anxiety symptoms over-and-above depression, general anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and health-related dysfunctional beliefs. Despite many important limitations, this study supported the hypothesis that metacognition may have an important role in health anxiety in clinical samples.
研究支持了焦虑敏感、与健康相关的功能失调信念和元认知信念在健康焦虑症状的发展和维持中可能发挥的特定作用。然而，元认知信念在健康焦虑中的作用仅在模拟样本中得到了探索。本研究的目的是首次探索在报告患有严重健康焦虑（疑病症）或疾病焦虑障碍诊断的参与者样本中，元认知信念与健康焦虑症状之间的关联，并检验在控制焦虑、抑郁、焦虑敏感和功能失调信念后，这些信念是否是健康焦虑的显著预测因素。一系列维度的自我报告测量被用于一个大型的意大利样本（N=458）。在双变量水平上，认为思维不可控的信念与健康焦虑的相关性强于任何功能失调信念和焦虑敏感分量表。层次多重回归分析的结果表明，认为思维不可控的信念可以预测健康焦虑症状，超过抑郁、一般焦虑、焦虑敏感和与健康相关的功能失调信念。尽管存在许多重要的局限性，但这项研究支持了元认知在临床样本中的健康焦虑中可能具有重要作用的假设。
