The mediator role of the child's conscious awareness level in the relationship between mother's health anxiety and child's health anxiety

This study aimed to examine the mediating role of children's conscious awareness in the relationship between mothers' health anxiety and children's health anxiety. In addition, it was examined whether children's health anxiety, mothers' health anxiety and children's conscious awareness differed according to sociodemographic characteristics. The research was conducted with 252 children aged 10-15 and their mothers. Within the scope of the research, data was collected online. The Illness Behavior Assessment Scale was used to evaluate the health anxiety levels of mother participants, the Illness Attitude Scale for Children was used to evaluate the health anxiety levels of child participants, and the Consciousness Scale for Children and Adolescents was used to evaluate the conscious awareness levels of child participants. Additionally, in order to evaluate sociodemographic variables, mother participants were asked to fill out the sociodemographic information form. Mediation analysis was conducted with Process Macro to analyze the main hypotheses of the study. As a result of the analyses, it was found that the child's level of conscious awareness had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between the child's health anxiety and the mother's health anxiety levels. The findings of the study reveal that conscious awareness is a potential effective mechanism in health anxiety in children, and also show that it is a concept that should be considered and investigated in the intergenerational transmission of health anxiety. It seems that more research should be conducted on this subject in order to develop treatment and preventive intervention plans regarding health anxiety in children.