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How Do Health Anxiety, Somatosensory Amplification, and Depression Levels Relate to Non-cyclical Mastalgia? A Case–Control Study

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Abstract

Symptoms that are not completely explicable, such as mastalgia, might cause individuals to experience more apprehension regarding health and to visit doctors more frequently. No study has been found in the literature that assessed the level of somatosensory amplification of patients with mastalgia. This study is intended to assess the levels of somatosensory amplification of patients who complain of mastalgia and to compare them to a healthy control group. Forty patients with the diagnosis of non-cyclical mastalgia and 41 voluntary controls were incorporated in the study. All patients participating in the study were assessed using the Somatosensory Amplification Scale (SSAS), Health Anxiety Inventory (HAI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The scores of SSAS, HAI, BAI, and BDI for the patient group were higher than those for the control group. Upon a simple regression analysis, the effect of education duration in mastalgia group on HAI was 12.4%, the effect of anxiety level on SSAS was 28%, and that of the depression level on HAI was 10.8%. Patients with mastalgia exhibited higher levels of somatosensory amplification, depression, anxiety, and health anxiety than the control group. The idiopathic symptoms might cause individuals to develop a higher level of somatosensory amplification and to perceive bodily symptoms more severely. Furthermore, such symptoms might further produce anxiety and depressive symptoms due to the higher perception by the individuals with apprehension related to their health.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Cicek Hocaoglu for the scientific editorial assistance.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Bozok University Faculty of Medicine, TR-66200, Yozgat, Turkey

    Yunus Hacimusalar & Ozgul Karaaslan

  2. Department of General Surgery, Erciyes University Faculty of Medicine, TR-38038, Kayseri, Turkey

    Tutkun Talih

Authors
  1. Yunus Hacimusalar
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  3. Ozgul Karaaslan
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Correspondence to Yunus Hacimusalar.

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The study was approved by the local Ethics Committee of Yozgat Bozok University with a protocol number of 2017-KAEK-189_2018.06.06_04 and performed under the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki for medical research involving human subjects.

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Hacimusalar, Y., Talih, T. & Karaaslan, O. How Do Health Anxiety, Somatosensory Amplification, and Depression Levels Relate to Non-cyclical Mastalgia? A Case–Control Study. Indian J Surg 82, 578–584 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12262-019-02014-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12262-019-02014-y

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