Dispositional aspects of body focus and idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF)

Body focus is often considered an undesirable characteristic from medical point of view as it amplifies symptoms and leads to higher levels of health anxiety. However, it is connected to mindfulness, well‐being and the sense of self in psychotherapy. The current study aimed to investigate the contri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scandinavian journal of psychology 2016-04, Vol.57 (2), p.136-143
Main Authors: Dömötör, Zsuzsanna, Doering, Bettina K., Köteles, Ferenc
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Anxiety - psychology
Attitude to Health
Awareness
Electromagnetic Fields
Female
Human Body
Humans
IEI-EMF
Male
Medically Unexplained Symptoms
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity - psychology
nocebo
somatosensory amplification
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Body focus is often considered an undesirable characteristic from medical point of view as it amplifies symptoms and leads to higher levels of health anxiety. However, it is connected to mindfulness, well‐being and the sense of self in psychotherapy. The current study aimed to investigate the contribution of various body focus related constructs to acute and chronic generation and maintenance of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). Thirty‐six individuals with idiopathic environmental intolerance to electromagnetic fields (IEI‐EMF) and 36 controls were asked to complete questionnaires assessing negative affect, worries about harmful effects of EMFs, health anxiety (HA), body awareness, and somatosensory amplification (SSA), and to report experienced symptoms evoked by a sham magnetic field. Body awareness, HA, SSA, and EMF‐related worries showed good discriminative power between individuals with IEI‐EMF and controls. Considering all variables together, SSA was the best predictor of IEI‐EMF. In the believed presence of a MF, people with IEI‐EMF showed higher levels of anxiety and reported more symptoms than controls. In the IEI‐EMF group, actual symptom reports were predicted by HA and state anxiety, while a reverse relationship between symptom reports and HA was found in the control group. Our findings show that SSA is a particularly important contributor to IEI‐EMF, probably because it is the most comprehensive factor in its aetiology. IEI‐EMF is associated with both a fear‐related monitoring of bodily symptoms and a non‐evaluative body focus. The identification of dispositional body focus may be relevant for the management of MUS.
ISSN:0036-5564
1467-9450
DOI:10.1111/sjop.12271