Filiz POLAT, Leyla DELİBAŞ, İbrahim BİLİR

Investigating the Relationship Between Cyberchondria Level and Perceived Stress in Young Adults

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between cyberchondria level and perceived stress in young adults. Material and Methods: This descriptive and relational study was conducted with 547 students studying at a university between September and November 2019. The data of the study were collected through the Personal Information Form, Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS), and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Results: It was determined that 92.1% of the students were in the age group of 18-24 years and 70.9% were female. 73.5% of the participants stated that they spend 1-5 hours a day on the internet, 31.8% stated that they always used the internet in health-related issues, and 17.4% stated that they believed to have an undiagnosed disease. It was found that PSS total mean score was 27.6±7.1 and CSS total mean score was 38.2±8.0. Conclusion: A positive correlation was determined between the cyberchondria severity scale total score and the perceived stress scale total score.

Keywords:

Cyberchondria, Young Adults, Perceived Stress,

PDF

___

Altındiş, S., İnci, MB., Aslan, FG. et al. (2018). An Evaluation of cyberchondria levels and related factors in university employees. Sakarya Med J, 8(2), 359-370.
Barke, A., Bleichhardt, G., Rief, W. et al. (2016). The Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS): German validation and development of a short form. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 23(5), 595–605. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-016-9549-8.
Batı, AH., Mandıracıoglu, A., Govsa, F. et al. (2018). Health anxiety and cyberchondria among Ege University health science students. Nurse Education Today, 71, 169-173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2018.09.029
Batıgün, AD., Gör, N., Kömürcü, B. et al. (2018). Cyberchondria Scale (CS): Development, validity and reliability study. Dusunen Adam The Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences, 31, 148-162. https://doi.org/10.5350/DAJPN2018310203
Cohen, S., Kamarch, T., Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24, 385-396
Dagar, D., Kakodkar, P., Shetiya, SH. (2019). Evaluating the cyberchondria construct among computer engineering 2019 students in Pune (India) Using Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS-15). Indian J Occup Environ Med, 23(3), 117–120. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoem.IJOEM_217_19
Doherty-Torstrick, ER., Walton, KE., Fallon BB. (2016). Cyberchondria: Parsing Health Anxiety From Online Behavior. Psychosomatics, 57(4), 390-400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psym.2016.02.002
Elciyar, K., Taşçı, D. (2017). Application of Cyberchondria Severity Scale to the students of Anadolu University Communication Faculty. Abant Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(4), 57-70.
Ertaş, H., Kıraç, R., Ünal, SN. (2020). Study of cybercondria levels and related factors of Faculty of Health Sciences students. International Journal of Society Researches, 15(23), 1746-1764. https://doi.org/10.26466/opus.616396
Eskin, M., Harlak, H., Demirkıran, F. et al. (2013). The adaptation of the perceived Stress Scale into Turkish: A reliability and validity analysis. New Symposium Journal, 51(3), 132-140.
Fergus TA. (2013). Cyberchondria and intolerance of uncertainty: Examining when individuals experience health anxiety in response to internet searches for medical information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social Networking, 16(10), 735-9. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0671
Fergus, TA., Spada, MM. (2017). Cyberchondria: Examining relations with problematic ınternet use and metacognitive beliefs. Clin Psychol Psychother, 24(6), 1322-1330. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2102
Gençer, AG., Karadere, ME., Okumuş, B. et al. (2018). Diagnoses that are not yet included in DSM-5 (Compulsive buying, misophonia, facebook jealousy, pagophagia, cyberchondria, internet addiction). Ç. Hocaoğlu (Ed.), DSM-5'in Yeni Tanıları (s. 87-96). Ankara: Türkiye Klinikleri.
Gül, Aİ., Özdemir, T., Börekçi, E. (2016). Health anxiety levels in patients admitted to internal medicine outpatient clinic for several times. Journal of Clinical and Analytical Medicine, 7(4), 437-439. https://doi.org/10.4328/JCAM.2951
Hart, J., Björgvinsson, T. (2010). Health anxiety and hypochondriasis: Description and treatment issues highlighted through a case illustration. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 74(2), 122-140.
Hocaoğlu, Ç. (2015). A different hypochondriasis: A case report. Journal of Mood Disorders, 5(1), 36-39. https://doi.org/10.5455/jmood.20141119012438
Jungmann, SM., Brand, S., Kolb, J. et al. (2020). Do Dr. Google and health apps have (comparable) side effects? An experimental study. Clinical Psychological Science, 8(2), 306-317. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702621989638.
Jutel, A. (2017). "Dr. Google" and his predecessors. Diagnosis, 4(2), 87-91. https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2016-0045
Lupton, D., Maslen, S. (2019). How women use digital technologies for health: Qualitative interview and focus group study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21(1), e11481. https://doi.org/10.2196/11481
Makarla, S., Gopichandran, V., Tondare, D. (2019). Prevalence and correlates of cyberchondria among professionals working in the information technology sector in Chennai, India: A cross-sectional study. J Postgrad Med, 65(2), 87–92. https://doi.org/10.4103/jpgm.JPGM_293_18
McElroy, E., Shevlin, M. (2014). The development and initial validation of the cyberchondria severity scale (CSS). Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(2), 259-265. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2013.12.007
Rice, RE. (2006). Influences, usage, and outcomes of internet health information searching: Multivariate results from the pew surveys. International Journal Of Medical İnformatics, 75(1), 8-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2005.07.032
Singh, K., Brown, R. J. (2016). From headache to tumour: An examination of health anxiety, health-related Internet use and 'query escalation'. Journal of Health Psychology, 21(9), 2008-2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105315569620
Starcevic, V. (2017). Cyberchondria: Challenges of problematic online searches for health-related information. Psychother Psychosom, 86(3), 129-133. https://doi.org/10.1159/000465525
Starcevic, V., Berle, D. (2013). Cyberchondria: towards a better understanding of excessive health-related internet use. Expert Rev. Neurother, 13(2), 205-213. https://doi.org/ 10.1586/ern.12.162
Te Poel F., Baumgartner, SE., Hartmann, T. et al. (2016). Disorders The curious case of cyberchondria: A longitudinal study on thereciprocal relationship between health anxiety and online health information seeking M. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 43, 32–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2016.07.009
Uzun, SU., Zencir, M. (2018). Reliability and validity study of the Turkish version of Cyberchondria Severity Scale. Current Psychology, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-0001-x
Wijesinghe, CA., Liyanage, ULNS., Kapugama, KGCL. et al. (2019). Muddling by googling Cyberchondria among outpatient attendees of two hospitals in Sri Lanka. J Psychiatry, 10(1), 11-15. https://doi.org/10.4038/sljpsyc.v10i1.8202