Health anxiety and illness-related fears across diverse chronic illnesses: A systematic review on conceptualization, measurement, prevalence, course, and correlates.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Patients with chronic diseases commonly report fears of illness or symptoms recurring or worsening. These fears have been addressed from an illness-specific perspective (e.g., fear of cancer recurrence), a generic illness perspective (e.g., fear of progression), and a psychiatric perspective (DSM-5 illness anxiety disorder and somatic symptom disorder). The broader concept of health anxiety (HA) can also be applied to patients with a chronic disease. This review was conducted to investigate the conceptual, theoretical, measurement-overlap, and differences between these distinct perspectives. We also aimed to summarize prevalence, course, and correlates of these fears in different chronic illnesses.

Methods

We used PsycINFO, PubMED, CINAHL, Web of Science, SCOPUS,

SUBMITTER: Lebel S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7384626 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature