Health anxiety During COVID-19: Predictive Roles of Health Promoting Behaviors and Sensory Processing Sensitivity

2021-01-01
Güneş, Seren
Bulut, Burcu Pınar
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Objective: The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in major changes in daily life and economic conditions while heightening physical and mental health problems, including health anxiety. Health authorities and elected officials have encouraged individuals to engage in health behaviors. Perceptions of and reactions to these changes could be subject to individual differences. In this line, the current study investigated the predictive roles of health promoting behaviors, sensory processing sensitivity, and their interactions with health anxiety. Design and measures: In this cross-sectional study, 355 participants (73% female, 25.9% male) whose ages range from 19 to 72 (M = 25.91, SD = 9.80) filled out self-reported measures on health promoting behaviors, sensory processing sensitivity, and health anxiety via an online platform between April and May 2020. Results: It was revealed that caring for a healthy diet, taking responsibility for health and sensory processing sensitivity, but not physical activity and stress management, were associated with health anxiety. Diagnoses and perceptions of physical and mental health problems also contributed to health anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: Individuals with higher levels of sensory processing sensitivity and health responsibility were more likely to experience higher levels of health anxiety, while typical physical activities and stress management behaviors were less likely to have an impact during the COVID-19 pandemic. These results highlight the importance of having a healthy diet and the need for pandemic-specific interventions for stress management and sport activities.
Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied

Suggestions

Disability salience as an indicator of loss anxiety: an alternative explanation for the fundamental fear of human beings
Atabey, Cemile Müjde; Öner Özkan, Bengi; Department of Psychology (2011)
The aim of the present research was to investigate the issue of loss anxiety within the framework of disability and terror management theory. A questionnaire package was administered to 217 participants twice to examine the effects of mortality salience and disability salience. Besides mortality salience, paralysis salience was found to be effective. Highly conservative participants were becoming more conservative in the paralysis salience and mortality salience conditions. Content analysis was also conduct...
Series: The research agenda for general practice/family medicine and primary health care in Europe. Part 2. Results: Primary care management and community orientation
Hummers-Pradier, Eva; Beyer, Martin; Chevallier, Patrick; Eilat-Tsanani, Sophia; Lionis, Christos; Peremans, Lieve; Petek, Davorina; Rurik, Imre; Soler, Jean Karl; Stoffers, Henri Ejh; Topsever, Pinar; Ungan, Mehmet; van Royen, Paul (2010-03-01)
At the WONCA Europe conference 2009 the recently published 'Research Agenda for General Practice/Family Medicine and Primary Health Care in Europe' was presented. It is a background paper and reference manual, providing advocacy of general practice/family medicine (GP/FM) in Europe. The Research Agenda summarizes the evidence relating to the core competencies and characteristics of the WONCA Europe defi nition of GP/FM, and its implications for general practitioners/family doctors, researchers and policy ma...
HOW DYSFUNCTIONAL ARE THE DYSFUNCTIONAL ATTITUDES IN ANOTHER CULTURE
SAHIN, NH; SAHIN, N (Wiley, 1992-03-01)
The Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS-A) has been used in many studies to measure depressogenic attitudes, vulnerability to depression and to assess the effectiveness of cognitive therapy. Despite its frequent use in research, no data have yet been reported on its item validity. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the item validity and psychometric properties of the DAS-A in the Turkish cultural context. The subjects were 345 university students. The locally adapted versions of the Beck ...
The Impact of COVID-19 on the People with Mental Illnesses: Health Anxiety, Coping Strategies, and Psychological Well-Being
Karaköse, Selin (ODTÜ- AYNA Klinik Psikoloji Destek Ünitesi, 2022-10)
Although depression, anxiety, and stress were highly prevalent in the general population during the pandemic, some marginalized groups, including patients with mental disorders might have been overlooked in studies. This study examined the relationship between health anxiety, coping strategies, and mental health outcomes, particularly depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress. The aim of the current study is to examine the mediator role of coping strategies between health anxiety and mental health outcomes i...
Daily life behaviour monitoring for health assessment using machine learning: bridging the gap between domains
Alemdar, Hande; Ersoy, Cem (2015-02-01)
Analysis of human behaviour for deducing health and well-being information is one of the contemporary challenges given the ageing in place. To this end, existing and newly developed machine learning methods are needed to be evaluated using annotated real-world data sets. However, the metrics used in performance evaluation are directly taken from the machine learning domain, and they do not necessarily consider the specific needs of human behaviour analysis such as recognizing the duration, start time and fr...
Citation Formats
S. Güneş and B. P. Bulut, “Health anxiety During COVID-19: Predictive Roles of Health Promoting Behaviors and Sensory Processing Sensitivity,” Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, vol. 156, no. 3, pp. 167–184, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85125927936&origin=inward.