The Effect of Health Literacy on Health Anxiety with the Mediation of Cyberchondria and Cognitive Flexibility in Breast Cancer Patients

 The present study was conducted to predict health anxiety based on health literacy and the mediating role of cyberchondria and cognitive flexibility in patients with a history of breast cancer.

The present study is descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of this study was patients with breast cancer in Tehran in 1401.  196 patients the Convenience sampling method. Participants completed the Health Literacy Questionnaire by Montazeri et al. (2015), Salkovskis and Warwick 's Health Anxiety Inventory (1989), Dennis and Vander Wal's Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (2010), and McElroy and Shevlin's Cyberchondria Severity Scale (2014). We used SEM method to analyze the data.

The results showed that the study model was optimally fit. There was a significant negative correlation between health literacy, cognitive flexibility, and health anxiety (P<0.001), and a significant positive correlation between cyberchondria and health anxiety (P<0.001). Regarding indirect paths, the model representing cognitive flexibility and cyberchondria mediating the relationship between health literacy and health anxiety was significant.

Conclusively, research findings have shown that it is important to increase health literacy through psychological flexibility by intervening and empowering people to overcome health barriers.  Accordingly, they are encouraged to use health literacy and awareness, and choose adaptive alternative strategies toward healthy actions and behaviors, and use less unusual patterns of anxiety reduction.