Health anxiety and attentional bias toward virus-related stimuli during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

After the COVID-19 worldwide spread, evidence suggested a vast diffusion of negative consequences on people's mental health. Together with depression and sleep difficulties, anxiety symptoms seem to be the most diffused clinical outcome. The current contribution aimed to examine attentional bias for virus-related stimuli in people varying in their degree of health anxiety (HA). Consistent with previous literature, it was hypothesized that higher HA would predict attentional bias, tested using a visual dot-probe task, to virus-related stimuli. Participants were 132 Italian individuals that participated in the study during the lockdown phase in Italy. Results indicated that the HA level predicts attentional bias toward virus-related objects. This relationship is double mediated by the belief of contagion and by the consequences of contagion as assessed through a recent questionnaire developed to measure the fear for COVID-19. These findings are discussed in the context of cognitive-behavioral conceptualizations of anxiety suggesting a risk for a loop effect. Future research directions are outlined.

Gender differences in health anxiety and musculoskeletal symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Health anxiety is one of the most predominant psychological symptoms during the pandemic [10][11][12][13]. Similar to before the pandemic, health anxiety was reported to be more prevalent in females than males during the COVID-19 pandemic and the female gender has been identified as a potent predictor of increased health anxiety [9,34].…”

“…The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected people's mental and physical health [8,9]. Health anxiety means worrying and experiencing anxiety due to a perceived threat to health and is one of the most predominant psychological symptoms during the pandemic [10][11][12][13]. Health anxiety exists along a continuum from a lack of health awareness to severe health anxiety [10].…”

“…Health anxiety exists along a continuum from a lack of health awareness to severe health anxiety [10]. Since health anxiety, which was reported to be associated with disability and loss of quality of life, has been seen more frequently during the pandemic, there is an increasing focus on the assessment and management of health anxiety in the current literature [11][12][13][14][15]. In Turkey, as in most other countries, studies show that anxiety has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Age-related differences in the perception of COVID-19 emergency during the Italian outbreak

“…Currently, there is a growing body of evidence examining the impact of the COVID-19 emergency on people's mental health, both in Italy (Cannito et al, 2020;Di Crosta et al, 2020;Fontanesi et al, 2020;Marazziti, Pozza, Di Giuseppe, & Conversano, 2020;Marchetti et al, 2020;Rossi et al, 2020), and worldwide (Huang & Zhao, 2020;Torales, O'Higgins, Castaldelli-Maia, & Ventriglio, 2020;Zhu et al, 2020). However, few studies explicitly focused on community-dwelling older adults, a population that has been identified as particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection and its consequences (Verity et al, 2020).…”

Data on the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on people's expectations about their future

“…The dataset includes raw data collected during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy (sheet 1). Investigated variables include demographic information, personality, affective state, and attitude related to the pandemic situation [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] . The dataset includes the original Italian version and English translation of the questionnaires we developed, as well as the original English items of the standardized questionnaires (sheet 2).…”