Abstract
Responses to health anxiety include avoidance and reassurance-seeking behaviors. We tested the hypothesis that avoidance would be associated with less healthcare use and reassurance seeking with more healthcare use. Participants’ (n = 395) complete measures of health anxiety behaviors, healthcare use in the previous 12 months (outpatient visits, emergency room visits, urgent care visits, number of doctors, number of scans, number of blood tests), and health anxiety intensity as a covariate. Our hypothesis was partially supported, as reassurance seeking was associated with more healthcare use (p-values 0.05), except for general avoidance with fewer scans (p = 0.010) and blood tests (p < 0.001). Future research on health anxiety should consider coping responses such as avoidance and reassurance seeking, and should extend this research to clinical care and similar concepts, like cancer worry.
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