Relationships between cyberchondria and obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions
Abstract
Researchers have recently begun to investigate a vicious cycle of escalating physical health concerns and online medical information seeking coined "cyberchondria". Research has shown that cyberchondria is strongly associated with health anxiety (HA), but there is a dearth of work investigating the potential relationships between cyberchondria and other anxiety-related pathologies. One such condition is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which could theoretically be related to cyberchondria given the physical health relevant focus of certain types of OC symptoms. The current study sought to investigate the potential relationship between cyberchondria OCD across OC symptom dimensions. Community participants (N=468) were recruited via online crowdsourcing to complete a battery of self-report questionnaires including cyberchondria and OC measures. Structural equation modeling revealed significant unique associations between both contamination/washing and responsibility for harm/checking symptoms, and cyberchondria, such that greater cyberchondria was associated with greater OC symptoms after controlling for HA and trait negative affect. These results suggest that similar to proposed models of cyberchondria and HA, cyberchondria could potentially play a role in the development/maintenance of two dimensions of OC symptoms, or vice versa. Future work will need to determine the causal nature of these relationships or whether they are simply co-occurring phenomena.
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All CSS subscales showed moderate to strong intercorrelations, except for the mistrust factor, where only small or nonexistent associations were observed.
“As detailed in Multimedia Appendix 4 [16-19,26,40,41] all CSS subscales showed moderate to strong intercorrelations, except for the mistrust factor, where only small or nonexistent associations were observed.”
From Conceptualizations of cyberchondria and relations to the anxiety spectrum: Systematic review and meta-analysis (2021) · cites this paper as [18]
All CSS and DOCS subscales showed significant and mostly moderate intercorrelations.
“Moreover, as detailed in Multimedia Appendix 8 [18,19,40], all CSS and DOCS subscales showed significant and mostly moderate intercorrelations.”
From Conceptualizations of cyberchondria and relations to the anxiety spectrum: Systematic review and meta-analysis (2021) · cites this paper as [18]
Cyberchondria is associated with other anxiety-related disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder or psychological variables such as anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty.
“Furthermore, cyberchondria is associated with other anxiety-related disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder [8, 11, 24, 32] or psychological variables such as anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty [7, 22].”
From What are the Implications of Excessive Internet Searches for Medical Information by Orthopaedic Patients? (2019) · cites this paper as [24]
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- Authors
- Norr, A. M., Oglesby, M. E., Raines, A. M., Macatee, R. J., Allan, N. P., & Schmidt, N. B.
- Affiliations
- Florida State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Schmidt, Norman B.
- Venue
- Psychiatry Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-12
- Volume
- 230
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 441-446
- ISSN
- 0165-1781 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2176328361
- Cited by
- 78
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 4.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychiatry Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Keywords
- cyberchondria, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, health anxiety, trait negative affect, obsessive-compulsive disorder
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Anxiety Disorders, Female, Humans, Hypochondriasis, Male, Middle Aged, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Internet, Young Adult, Information Seeking Behavior, Self Report
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