ArticleBMC public health2024
Cyberchondria severity and utilization of health services in Polish society: a cross-sectional study.
Article in BMC public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors Towards Cyberchondria: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Italian Adolescents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Perceived Credibility of Health News and Its Relationship with Trust in Physicians and the Health Care System.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Trends in the Implementation of the Cyberchondria Severity Scale: Bibliometric Analysis.JMIR mental health · 2026Article
- Cyberchondria and complexity: a systems-level exploration of anxiety and informational instability in the digital age.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Examining the relationships between e-health literacy, cyberchondria, health anxiety, and health perception among foreign university students.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Impact of Cyberchondria on Health and Quality of Life: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Analysis of relationship between cyberchondria levels and oral health in dental patients.BMC oral health · 2025Article
- The influence of sports technology device usage on middle-aged health anxiety: chain mediation effects of health control perception and self-efficacy reconstruction.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Cyberchondria, Health Literacy, and Perception of Risk in Croatian Patients with Risk of Sexually Transmitted Infections and HIV-A Cross-Sectional Study.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
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2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
backgroundIt has been suggested that cyberchondria leads to increased utilization of healthcare services. Unfortunately, not many studies have analyzed this effect comprehensively. The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between cyberchondria severity and the utilization of healthcare services among adult Internet users after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and the health status of respondents.
methodsThe analysis detailed in this paper examined data from a computer-based, web-based interviewing survey performed among a representative sample of 1613 Polish Internet users. Cyberchondria severity was assessed with the Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS). The variables reflecting the use of healthcare services were based on the frequency of visits to family physicians and specialists, diagnostic procedures, hospital admissions, and emergency services, and finally being vaccinated against COVID-19. The effect of cyberchondria severity on the utilization of healthcare services and alternative medicine was adjusted for key sociodemographic variables, the presence of chronic diseases, disability, and unspecific symptoms. For variables reflecting the use of services, ordinal logistic regression and multivariable logistic regression models were developed.
resultsCyberchondria severity was a significant predictor of the utilization of all but one of the analyzed healthcare services and alternative medicine. The odds of being in a higher category of the utilization of visits to family physicians and specialists, hospital admissions, emergency services and alternative medicine services increased by a factor of 1.01-1.02 for every unit increase of the cyberchondria score. The cyberchondria score was a negative predictor of COVID-19 vaccine uptake. The effect of cyberchondria on outcome variables was independent of the level of health anxiety, sociodemographic variables, and variables reflecting the health status of respondents.
conclusionsCyberchondria leads to more intensive use of nearly all healthcare services, but in the case of vaccination against COVID-19, cyberchondria severity was a negative predictor. Cyberchondria's effect extends beyond health anxiety.
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