Effect of health anxiety on disease perception and treatment compliance in elderly patients during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey.
Ümran Varlı, Naile Alankaya
PMID 36064251WHAT IT FOUND
Older Turkish adults averaged 18.73 of 54 on a health anxiety scale during the pandemic.
Scores were higher in those diagnosed with COVID-19 or with a relative diagnosed with it. Anxiety was weakly linked to knowledge about following treatment, not disease perception.
Key findings
01Health anxiety did not correlate significantly with disease perception, but it correlated weakly with the knowledge part of treatment compliance (r = 0.123; p < 0.05).
02Mean health anxiety was 18.73 ± 8.87, mean disease perception was 54.24 ± 9.98, and mean compliance motivation and knowledge scores were 1.28 ± 0.74 and 2.04 ± 0.92.
03Participants diagnosed with COVID-19 had higher health anxiety scores than participants not diagnosed (p = 0.0001), and participants with a relative diagnosed with COVID-19 also had higher health anxiety scores (p = 0.0001).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that health anxiety caused better or worse treatment compliance. Data came from online forms, which likely excluded older people who could not use smartphones or social media. The 401 participants were not described as a random sample of the 7,550,000 elderly people in Turkey. The treatment compliance scale was not internally consistent in this sample, with Cronbach's alpha 0.51 overall, 0.55 for motivation and 0.59 for knowledge. Many group comparisons were made, so some significant findings may reflect chance rather than a stable relationship.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that lowering health anxiety will improve treatment compliance. This was a cross-sectional survey, and the main correlation was a weak positive link between health anxiety and the compliance knowledge sub-score (r = 0.123; p < 0.05), not a tested intervention.