Psychometric properties of the Health Anxiety by Proxy Scale (HAPYS): A new questionnaire to assess parents' worries about their child's health

Ingeman, Katrine; Wright, K.; Frostholm, L.; Frydendal, D. Hoffmann; Ørnbøl, E.; Rask, C.

doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2022.110861

Cited by 1 publication

(5 citation statements)

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“…It covers thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are characteristic of health anxiety by proxy and with an additional impact section. Good face and content validity has been established and further validation supports its psychometric properties with excellent internal and test–retest reliability, convergent validity with the construct of parental catastrophizing and good discriminative validity with higher scores observed in parents diagnosed with health anxiety compared to parents with diagnoses of functional somatic syndromes and healthy parents, respectively (Ingeman et al., 2022). Finally, the Fetal Health Anxiety Inventory , based on the Short Health Anxiety Inventory , specifically assesses the anxiety an expectant mother may experience regarding her developing fetus (Reiser & Wright, 2019).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inherent to the concept of health anxiety by proxy is parental engagement in specific maladaptive illness‐related cognitions and behaviors that may be observed and experienced by the child as a function of their worries about their child's health (Ingeman et al., 2021, 2022; Thorgaard, Frostholm, Walker, Jensen, et al., 2017). As in the small study by Wright et al.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These focus on the concepts of fetal health anxiety and health anxiety by proxy, respectively. As noted earlier in the measurement section, fetal health anxiety refers to anxiety an expectant mother may experience regarding her developing fetus (Reiser & Wright, 2019), whereas health anxiety by proxy refers to parental persistent concerns about the health of one's child, which drives engagement in maladaptive parental behaviors such as disproportionate attention directed to observable or suspected symptoms in the child and misinterpretation of child‐reported symptoms as indicative of a physical illness (Ingeman et al., 2021, 2022; Thorgaard et al., 2017).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Health anxiety by proxy. Inherent to the concept of health anxiety by proxy is parental engagement in specific maladaptive illness-related cognitions and behaviors that may be observed and experienced by the child as a function of their worries about their child's health (Ingeman et al, 2021(Ingeman et al, , 2022. As in the small study by Wright et al (2023), employed the parent version of the Illness Worry subscale in their examination of health anxiety by proxy in the previously mentioned casecontrol study on mothers with severe health anxiety and two control groups (i.e., mothers with rheumatoid arthritis and healthy mothers).…”

Section: Intergenerational Transmissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Very recently, an ACT-based internet-based program, PROXY, based on an existing treatment program iACT (Hoffmann et al, 2021;Hoffmann, Rask, Hedman-Lagerl-€ of, Lj otsson, & Frostholm, 2018), has been developed to specifically target parents with health anxiety by proxy. The results from a first efficacy testing employing a single case experimental design are now pending (Ingeman et al, 2023).…”

Section: Prevention and Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Annual Research Review: Health anxiety in children and adolescents—developmental aspects and cross‐generational influences

Rask,

Duholm,

Poulsen

et al. 2023

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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Health anxiety involves excessive worries about one's health along with beliefs one has an illness or may contract a serious disease. Concerning evidence suggests that health anxiety is on the rise in society, possibly further fueled by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Recent classification systems acknowledge that impairing health‐related worries and beliefs can emerge in early childhood with significant levels of symptoms persisting throughout childhood, and possibly continuous with diagnostic considerations in adulthood. This narrative review summarizes recent research advances in health anxiety in children and adolescents, focusing on various developmental aspects of health anxiety and related concepts in youths. Findings suggest that health anxiety symptoms in young age groups are associated with impairment, distress, and increased healthcare use, as well as substantial comorbidity with mainly other emotional problems and disorders. Furthermore, longitudinal studies suggest that childhood health anxiety can persist across adolescence, perhaps with links to chronic courses in adulthood. The growing literature was further reviewed, thus extending our understanding of early risk factors, including the potential role of exposure to serious illness and transgenerational transmission of health anxiety. Learning more about developmental trajectories will be highly relevant to inform strategies for early detection and prevention. While modified cognitive behavioral therapies in adults are successful in treating health anxiety, specific interventions have not yet been tested in youths. Given substantial overlaps with other psychopathology, it could be important to develop and explore more transdiagnostic and scalable approaches that take advantage of common factors in psychotherapy, while also including a wider perspective on potential familiar maladaptive illness cognitions and behaviors.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%