Health Anxiety and Patient Behavior

Economic models of patient decision-making emphasize the costs of getting medical attention and the improved physical health that results from it. This note builds a model of patient decision-making when fears or anxiety about the future-captured as beliefs about next period's state of health-also enter the patient's utility function. Anxiety can lead the patient to avoid doctor's visits or other easily available information about her health. However, this avoidance cannot take any form: she will never avoid the doctor with small problems, and under regularity conditions she will never go to a bad doctor to limit the information received.