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Cyberchondria and its Relationships with Related Constructs: a Network Analysis

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Abstract

Cyberchondria denotes repeated online searches for health information that are associated with increasing levels of health anxiety. The aims of this study were to apply network analysis to investigate the extent to which cyberchondria is a distinct construct, ascertain which of the related constructs have the strongest relationships with cyberchondria and investigate whether some of the symptoms of cyberchondria are more central to the construct of cyberchondria. Questionnaires assessing the severity of cyberchondria, health anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, intolerance of uncertainty, problematic Internet use, anxiety, depression and somatic symptoms were administered to 751 participants who searched for health information online during a previous 3-month period and were recruited from an online crowdsourcing platform. Network analyses were used to compute the networks, perform community detection tests and calculate centrality indices. Results suggest that cyberchondria is a relatively specific syndrome-like construct, distinct from all related constructs and consisting of interrelated symptoms. It has the strongest relationships with problematic Internet use and health anxiety. No symptom of cyberchondria emerged clearly as more central to the construct of cyberchondria. Future research should aim to deepen our understanding of cyberchondria and its links with psychopathology, especially its close relationship with problematic Internet use.

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Funding

Preparation of this paper was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHRMC) Early Career Fellowship (GNT1122203) awarded to David Berle. The NHMRC had no role in the design of the study, data collection, data analysis, interpretation of data or in the writing or revision of the manuscript. Other authors did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine and Health, Sydney Medical School, Nepean Clinical School, Discipline of Psychiatry, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Vladan Starcevic

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Nepean Hospital, PO Box 63, Penrith, NSW, 27151, Australia

    Vladan Starcevic & Kirupamani Viswasam

  3. Division of Prison Health, Geneva University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Stéphanie Baggio

  4. Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Stéphanie Baggio

  5. Discipline of Clinical Psychology, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    David Berle

  6. School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    David Berle

  7. Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland

    Yasser Khazaal

  8. Research Centre, University Institute of Mental Health at Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Yasser Khazaal

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  1. Vladan Starcevic
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  2. Stéphanie Baggio
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  5. Kirupamani Viswasam
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Correspondence to Vladan Starcevic.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Starcevic, V., Baggio, S., Berle, D. et al. Cyberchondria and its Relationships with Related Constructs: a Network Analysis. Psychiatr Q 90, 491–505 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-019-09640-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-019-09640-5

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