Computerized Attention Retraining for Individuals with Elevated Health Anxiety

Background And Objectives: Current cognitive-behavioral theorists conceptualize hypochondriasis as excessive health anxiety (HA). Growing evidence suggests that elevated HA is associated with attentional bias (AB) toward potential health-threat information.

Design: This study aimed to examine the effects of attention retraining among individuals with elevated HA, using the established attention modification programs (AMP) designed to train participants to disengage attention from ideographically chosen health-threat words.

Methods: Thirty-six randomly assigned individuals with elevated HA completed eight twice-weekly sessions of the AMP (n = 18) or the attention control condition (ACC; n = 18).

Results: Despite using the well-established AMP protocol widely used within the field of anxiety disorders, we did not find evidence for change in AB following training. Further, AMP did not outperform ACC in reducing HA and other relevant emotional symptoms. However, both AMP and ACC evidenced overall significant symptom reduction in most of the outcome measures, including overall HA, anxiety sensitivity, general depression and anxiety, and somatic complaints.

Conclusions: Further research is needed to better understand the effects and mechanisms of AMP as a possible cognitive intervention for HA.