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.
Koszegi
Botond
B
Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 549 Evans Hall #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. botond@econ.berkeley.edu
D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology*; D011336:Probability; D011594:Psychometrics; D014342:Truth Disclosure