Introduction: Health anxiety refers to excessive worries and anxiety about harboring serious illness based on misinterpretation of bodily sensations or changes as signs of serious illness. Severe HA is associated with disability and high health care costs. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate the dimensions of health anxiety in nurses compared to normal people based on the role of maladaptive personality dimensions.
Methods: Method was ex post facto and study population included all nurses of Tabriz health centres. 34 individuals were selected through a purposive sampling and matched with 34 normal persons by using informed consent. In order to collect research data, Health Anxiety Inventory, Personality Inventory for DSM-5 [PID-5] and positive and negative affect schedule were implemented among the participants and data were analyzed by using descriptive indicators and Multivariate and univariate analysis of variance.
Results: The results showed that there is a significant difference between nurses and normal people in terms of health anxiety. Also, significant differences were found in most aspects of personality [negative affect, Antagonism, and Disinhibiting]. Nurses also experienced more negative emotions than normal people, but there was no significant difference in terms of positive emotional experience.
Conclusion: Nurses seem to be more exposed to health anxiety due to their stressful environment and some personality traits. Therefore, it is necessary to intervene in order to reduce the stressors.