Online health research and health anxiety: A systematic review and conceptual integration.
Open accessAbstract
Using the Internet to obtain health information (“online health research”, OHR) is commonplace. This paper provides a systematic narrative review of evidence concerning the relationship between OHR and health anxiety. We conclude that health anxiety is associated with more frequent self-reported OHR, heightened distress after OHR, and increased doctor visits post-OHR. Evidence suggests that OHR often has a reassurance seeking function and can relieve anxiety, but that it can also cause alarm and become a distressing, compulsive behaviour. We present a novel model that integrates these perspectives and existing research within a single explanatory framework that distinguishes between problematic OHR and compulsive OHR and describes the role of positive and negative metacognitions in their respective development.
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- Authors
- Brown, R. J., Skelly, N., & Chew-Graham, C. A.
- Affiliations
- Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GB)
- NHS Lanarkshire (GB)
- Keele University (GB)
- Venue
- Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice
- Published
- 2020-06
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 2
- ISSN
- 0969-5893 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2850
- OpenAlex
- W2950501406
- Cited by
- 140
- References
- 79
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 11 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 2.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- Locations
- Clinical Psychology Science and Practice (publishedVersion)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Keywords
- health anxiety, health information seeking, reassurance seeking, metacognition, physician visits, conceptual blending
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
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