title: Screening for hypochondriasis with the Illness Attitude Scales.
abstract: The Illness Attitude Scales (IAS; Kellner, 1986, 1987) may prove highly useful for the screening of hypochondriasis. We expected the IAS subscales to be equally as effective as the 7-item short version of the Whiteley Index (Whiteley-7; Fink et al., 1999), which has previously been shown to be useful in screening for somatoform disorders. We investigated participants of a German population (n = 1,575) and 61 patients with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of hypochondriasis. The Bodily Preoccupations (BP) subscale showed high sensitivity (.92) and specificity (.90) as well as demonstrating convergent and discriminant validity. We found evidence for the superiority of the BP subscale over the Whiteley-7 in the screening of hypochondriasis.
authors.affiliation: Department for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany. weck@psych.uni-frankfurt.de
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Weck
authors.forename: Gaby
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bleichhardt
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hiller
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D006998:Hypochondriasis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000592:standards; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012737:Sex Factors; D055815:Young Adult