Effects of Health Anxiety in recently diagnosed Multiple Sclerosis
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The development of a targeted CBT intervention for health anxiety in recently diagnosed patients with Multiple Sclerosis: a replication and brief case series
IRAS ID
130410
Contact name
Neil Carrigan
Contact email
Research summary
Sometimes anxiety can present in patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) with symptoms that appear similar to their MS, making them worry that their MS is getting worse. This worry then makes the anxiety symptoms worse which in turn makes the worry about their MS worse leading to a vicious cycle that reduces their quality of life, over and above the effects of their MS. This process, that maintains the anxiety, can be explained by the cognitive model of health anxiety. Previous research by Hayter et al (2011) showed that MS patients with high levels of health anxiety were more likely to view symptoms that could have been caused by anxiety as being their MS compared to MS patients with low levels of health anxiety. The high health anxious patients also thought their performance on physical and mental ability tasks was worse than it actually was – and attributed their poor performance to their MS. This last finding suggests targeting their mis-attribution of poor performance to their MS using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). This is done by getting patients to compare how poorly they thought they did with their actual performance on tasks as a way of helping them to view their symptoms as anxiety that can be treated – rather than their MS. Hence this research study will attempt to replicate the findings of Hayter et al. by comparing patients with high level of health anxiety with those low in health anxiety on measures of their quality of life (QoL), cognitive and physical tasks (e.g., grip strength) as well how the patients themselves view their performance on these tasks. Replicating the above findings would suggest that CBT for the MS patients high in health anxiety should be successful. The CBT treatment will be assessed through a series of case studies.
REC name
South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/SC/0547
Date of REC Opinion
11 Nov 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion