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Health‐Related Dysfunctional Beliefs and Health Anxiety: Further Evidence of Cognitive Specificity
Author(s) -
Fergus Thomas A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.22012
Subject(s) - dysfunctional family , anxiety , psychology , structural equation modeling , clinical psychology , cognition , path analysis (statistics) , mental health , psychiatry , statistics , mathematics
Objective The specificity of Salkovskis and Warwick's (2001) 4 health‐related dysfunctional beliefs to health anxiety was examined. Method Specificity was examined using a medically healthy sample of community members recruited through the Internet ( N = 410, mean age = 32.9 years, 55.4% female). Structural equation modeling was used to compare the equivalence of latent correlations and partial path coefficients that controlled for the overlap among the targeted dysfunctional beliefs. Results Health‐related dysfunctional beliefs were significantly more strongly related to health anxiety than obsessive‐compulsive symptoms. Further, health‐related dysfunctional beliefs continued to share robust relations with health anxiety after controlling for related dysfunctional beliefs, although anxiety sensitivity appeared particularly relevant to health anxiety as well. Conclusions These results support the specificity of Salkovskis and Warwick's health‐related dysfunctional beliefs to health anxiety, as well as the importance given to dysfunctional beliefs within cognitive‐behavioral models and treatments of health anxiety.