Comparison of individuals with high and low health anxiety in terms of intolerance of uncertainty, locus of control, difficulty in emotion regulation, psychological resilience, and psychological well-being and the role of cognitive-behavioral based mobile application in reducing high health anxiety

Health anxiety is a disorder that occurs as intense fears about the illness, beliefs that the illness will have serious consequences, and misinterpretation of body sensations. Literature indicates that the cognitive behavioral therapy is efficient in the treatment of the disease. This study aimed to compare groups with high and low health anxiety according to health anxiety symptom severity, intolerance of uncertainty, health locus of control, psychological well-being, emotion regulation difficulty levels and resilience, to develop a model for health anxiety and to examine the role of the mobile application developed for this thesis study. For this aim, mobile application contents were prepared primarily based on the health anxiety formulation of the cognitive behavioral approach. The sample of the first phase consisted of 338 participants (311 women, 27 men) aged 25-50. Demographic Information Form, Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale, Health Anxiety Scale, Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, Psychological Resilience Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scale and Covid-19 Illness Perception Scale were applied. The results showed that the groups with high and low health anxiety differed significantly in terms of all variables except health locus of control. In the second phase, 26 participants (23 women, 3 men) who scored 1 standard deviation higher than the group average on the Health Anxiety Scale were included. It took 14 days to complete the mobile application. The results showed that the cognition-behavior based mobile application could be used to support individual and face-to-face therapies in reducing health anxiety. The results were discussed in the light of the literature.