Medical information seeking: impact on risk for anxiety psychopathology.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Increased utilization of online medical information seeking demands investigation of potentially detrimental effects of these activities. The present study investigated whether viewing medical websites may adversely affect anxiety sensitivity (AS), a well-established risk factor for the development of psychopathology. METHODS Participants (N = 52) were randomly assigned to view medical symptom related websites or general health and wellness control websites. AS was measured before and after the website viewing. RESULTS Individuals in the medical website group reported higher AS compared to the control group at post-manipulation after controlling for baseline health anxiety and baseline AS. Additionally, intolerance of uncertainty (IU), an individual difference variable assessing negative beliefs about uncertainty, significantly moderated this effect such that medical website viewing only affected AS in participants with high IU but not in participants with low IU. LIMITATIONS The limitations of the current study include the lack of individualization of the website viewing and the short duration of the website viewing. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study provide initial evidence that exposure to online medical information could increase risk for anxiety psychopathology in individuals with elevated IU. Additionally, these results provide support for a learning based model of the etiology of AS.