Health Anxiety Predicts Postponing or Cancelling Routine Medical Health Care Appointments among Women in Perinatal Stage during the Covid-19 Lockdown

Mehran Shayganfard, Fateme Mahdavi, Mohammad Haghighi, Dena Sadeghi Bahmani and Serge Brand
Additional contact information
Mehran Shayganfard: Department of Psychiatry, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak 3848176341, Iran
Fateme Mahdavi: Student Research Committee, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak 3848176341, Iran
Mohammad Haghighi: Research Center for Behavioral Disorders and Substances Abuse, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan 65174, Iran
Dena Sadeghi Bahmani: Departments of Physical Therapy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35209, USA
Serge Brand: Departments of Physical Therapy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35209, USA

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 21, 1-13

Abstract: To avoid spreading the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), health authorities have forced people to reorganize their working and private lives and to avoid open and public spaces as much as possible. This has also been the case for women both during pregnancy and after delivery. Here, we investigated the associations between subjective beliefs in risk of infections and health anxiety, depression, stress, and other perinatal dimensions. To this end, we assessed 103 women (mean age: 28.57 years) during pregnancy and after delivery. They completed a series of questionnaires covering sociodemographic information, perinatal information, health anxiety, post-partum depression, and stress. Sixty-six participants (64.1%) were in the pre-partum stage, and 37 (35.9%) were post-partum. Health anxiety was unrelated to depression or stress. Knowing and being close to infected people was associated with higher health anxiety. Strict following of the safety recommendations was associated with greater health anxiety, depression, and stress. Postponing or cancelling routine medical check appointments was observed among participants with high health anxiety scores. Higher illness severity, overall health anxiety scores, and lower stress scores predicted those participants who postponed or cancelled their routine medical check appointments. Post-partum stage and a larger number of children were associated with higher stress scores, but not with depression or stress. The results are of practical and clinical importance; it appears that health anxiety, which is to say fear of getting infected with COVID-19 during pregnancy or at the post-partum stage, was associated with postponing or cancelling routine medical check appointments, but not with stress or depression.

Keywords: COVID-19; perinatal care; health anxiety; depression; stress; pregnancy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8272/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8272/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:21:p:8272-:d:442124

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().