# The association between health anxiety and visits to traditional and complementary medicine providers in Norway: the Tromsø7 Study

## TL;DR

The study finds that health anxiety is linked to higher odds of visiting traditional and complementary medicine providers in Norway.

## Contribution

This paper is the first to show a consistent association between health anxiety and T&CM provider visits in a large general population.

## Key findings

- A 1-point increase in health anxiety score was associated with 5–7% higher odds of visiting T&CM providers.
- Health anxiety was more strongly linked to complementary medicine use in men compared to women.
- The association between health anxiety and traditional healer visits was not significant in those with multimorbidity.

## Abstract

Reassurance-seeking behaviour as a symptom of health anxiety (HA) is proposed as one important reason for healthcare use in conventional healthcare. However, we know little about the association between HA and traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM), especially for provider visits. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap by examining the association between HA and T&CM provider visits in a large, adult general population.

This study used cross-sectional data from the seventh survey (2015–2016) of the Tromsø Study, where 19 639 participants responded to questions about visits to T&CMs providers the past 12 months, as well as a questionnaire on HA. T&CM visits were registered as (1) a complementary medicine (CM) provider, (2) an acupuncturist, (3) a traditional healer (TM), or (4) any of the above. Whiteley Index-6-R was used to measure HA as a continuous construct ranging from 0 to 24. Logistic regression was used to analyse the associations. Mental and somatic illness, demographic and socioeconomic variables were included as confounders.

HA was significantly and positively associated with visits to all T&CM practitioners, where a 1-point increase in the HA score was associated with 5–7% higher odds for visits across all types of T&CM practitioner categories. The results were not significantly altered by adjusting for mental and somatic illness, demographic nor socioeconomic variables for the population as a whole, but interaction analyses showed that HA was not significantly associated with visits to TM providers in participants reporting multimorbidity. Moreover, HA was more strongly associated with CM provider use in men, than women.

In our large, adult general population, we found consistent and significant associations between HA and visits to a T&CM provider. This can indicate that HA warrants recognition in T&CM visits.

Not applicable.