1 Centre for Psychiatry, Imperial College London, London, UK.
2 Department of Statistics, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK.
Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2019 Nov;65(7-8):566-569. doi: 10.1177/0020764019866231. Epub 2019 Aug 3.
Health anxiety may be an increasing problem because of the focus on monitoring health and increasing use of the Internet for self-diagnosis (cyberchondria). There is very little information about changes in the prevalence of health anxiety.
We compared the prevalence of health anxiety in four medical clinics in one hospital over a 4-year period using the Health Anxiety Inventory (HAI) as a diagnostic marker.
Patients attending cardiology, endocrine, gastroenterology and respiratory medicine clinics at King's Mill Hospital, North Nottinghamshire, completed the HAI while waiting for their appointments. There were eight research assistants involved in collecting data, two in the 2006-2008 period and six in the 2008-2010 period. As a consequence, more data were collected on the second occasion.
There was an increase in the prevalence of health anxiety from 14.9% in 2006-2008 (54 positive of 362 assessed) to 19.9% (1,132 positive out of 5,704 assessed) in 2008-2010. This increase was primarily noted in gastroenterology clinics (increase of 10%) and not shown in endocrine ones.
The prevalence of health anxiety is increasing in those who attend medical out-patient clinics. Reasons are given that this may be a possible result of cyberchondria, as the excessive use of the Internet to interpret troubling symptoms is growing. Further studies are needed in other populations, but there is reason to be concerned at this trend as it is likely to increase the number of medical consultations unnecessarily.
由于人们关注健康监测以及越来越多地使用互联网进行自我诊断（网络搜索强迫症），健康焦虑可能成为一个日益严重的问题。关于健康焦虑患病率变化的信息却很少。
我们使用健康焦虑量表（HAI）作为诊断标记，比较了一家医院的 4 个医疗诊所 4 年内健康焦虑的患病率。
诺丁汉郡北金斯米尔医院的心脏病学、内分泌学、胃肠病学和呼吸医学诊所的患者在预约时填写 HAI。共有 8 名研究助理参与数据收集，其中 2 名在 2006-2008 年期间，6 名在 2008-2010 年期间。因此，第二次收集的数据更多。
健康焦虑的患病率从 2006-2008 年的 14.9%（362 例评估中有 54 例阳性）增加到 2008-2010 年的 19.9%（5704 例评估中有 1132 例阳性）。这种增加主要发生在胃肠病学诊所（增加 10%），而内分泌学诊所没有显示。
在那些参加门诊的人中，健康焦虑的患病率正在增加。给出的原因是，这可能是网络搜索强迫症的一个可能结果，因为人们越来越多地使用互联网来解释令人不安的症状。需要在其他人群中进行进一步的研究，但有理由对这一趋势感到担忧，因为这可能会不必要地增加医疗咨询的次数。
