comparison of perfectionism and tolerance of ambiguity in the subtypes of illness anxiety disorder

Objective: illness anxiety disorder (iad) has two subtypes, care-seeking type, and careavoidant.there is little information about the differences between the two subtypes.methods: this study was carried out to compare perfectionism and tolerance of ambiguityin the subtypes of the iad. to this end, a causal-comparative design was employed. thestatistical population of the study included clients with symptoms of iad who were referred topsychiatric and psychological clinics in urmia city (west azerbaijan province, iran) in 2019.after conducting a semi-structured interview, 60 subjects were selected as samples, using aconvenience sampling method. the perfectionism inventory and the tolerance of ambiguityquestionnaire were utilized for data collection. the collected data were analyzed by themultivariate analysis of variance test.results: the care-avoiding subtype showed significantly higher scores on some subscales ofperfectionism, including concern over mistakes (f=8.735; p=0.005), need for approval (f=4.988;p=0.029), and organization (f=4.505; p=0.038). on the contrary, the care-seeking type showed asignificantly lower tolerance of ambiguity than the care-avoidant type (t=2.689; p=0.001).conclusion: the findings of this study suggest some subtle differences between the subtypesof iad. as a result, paying attention to these differences can lead to developing tailoredtreatments for each of the iad subtypes.