Holden Monique L, Gooi Chien H, Antognelli Sophie, Joubert Amy, Sabel Isaac, Stavropoulos Lauren, Newby Jill M
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
J Clin Psychol. 2025 Apr;81(4):237-248. doi: 10.1002/jclp.23765. Epub 2025 Jan 10.
A major characteristic of health anxiety is the tendency to attribute benign bodily sensations to serious illnesses. This has been supported by empirical research in non-clinical samples, and samples of individuals diagnosed with Hypochondriasis. However, no study to date has explored symptom attribution styles of individuals with the DSM-5 diagnosis of Illness Anxiety Disorder.
Sixty-one participants, including a clinical Illness Anxiety Disorder (n = 35) and healthy control (n = 26) sample, completed self-report measures of health anxiety and an Attribution Task, whereby they were presented with eight common bodily sensations and asked to generate possible explanations for them.
Results showed that relative to healthy controls, participants with Illness Anxiety Disorder overall were more likely to make more serious, 'catastrophic' somatic attributions to symptoms, and less likely to generate non-threatening normalising explanations. These results also extended to their initial attributions, conceptualised as the 'jumping to conclusions' bias, and as an exploratory index of flexibility, they were also found to make less attributions overall compared to healthy controls.
Findings provide support for the cognitive behavioural theory of health anxiety, and highlight the importance of assessing and addressing symptom attributions with clients with illness anxiety disorder.
健康焦虑的一个主要特征是倾向于将良性身体感觉归因于严重疾病。这一点已得到非临床样本以及被诊断为疑病症的个体样本的实证研究支持。然而,迄今为止尚无研究探讨被诊断为 DSM - 5 疾病焦虑障碍的个体的症状归因方式。
61 名参与者,包括临床疾病焦虑障碍组(n = 35)和健康对照组(n = 26),完成了健康焦虑的自我报告测量以及一项归因任务,即向他们呈现八种常见身体感觉,并要求他们对这些感觉给出可能的解释。
结果显示,相对于健康对照组,疾病焦虑障碍参与者总体上更有可能对症状做出更严重的“灾难性”躯体归因,而不太可能给出无威胁的正常化解释。这些结果还扩展到他们最初的归因,被概念化为“急于下结论”偏差,并且作为灵活性的探索性指标,与健康对照组相比,他们总体上做出的归因也更少。
研究结果为健康焦虑的认知行为理论提供了支持,并强调了对疾病焦虑障碍患者评估和处理症状归因的重要性。