Preventing Health Anxiety: The Role of Self-Evaluation, Sense of Coherence, Self-Rated Health and Perceived Social Support

Background: Components of Self, completed with the perceived social support determine the individual differences in the evaluation of a stressor and the behavioral responses toward it, such as health-related anxiety. The study set as a goal the analysis of associations between the components of Self, such as self-evaluation, sense of coherence, perceived social support, and reported health-related anxiety in an adult sample. Methods: 147 adults from the 18–73 age group (mean age 37.5) voluntarily completed the questionnaire through Qualtrics online platform containing the Short Health Anxiety Inventory, Core Self-Evaluation Scale, Social Support Assessing Scale, and one Health Self-Evaluation Item. Results: ANOVA found relevant differences in total scores and subscales’ scores of the health anxiety scale depending on the positive self-evaluation. Linear regression shows that the analyzed variables were responsible for the prediction of a higher value on the “Perceived probability of becoming ill” subscale in a proportion of 45.6% and for the “Perceived consequence of illness” subscale in a proportion of 20.2% The predictive value of the linear regression model for the total score on the health anxiety scale was 46.3%. Our findings show that negative Core Self-Evaluation is linked with perceived health anxiety. Conclusions: Self-evaluation, sense of coherence and perceived social support influence the perceived health and can explain the differences in the reported health-related anxiety.