Searching for health information on the Internet, i.e. using the so-called Dr. Google, is a common occurrence. However, a group of people who lose themselves in such behavior may slip into cyberchondria, the Internet’s form of hypochondria.
This is the result of a study conducted at Baylor University of Waco in Texas (USA).
Cyberchondria are unjustified, increased worry about their health caused by searching the Internet for medical information about symptoms that, although perfectly normal, bother the patient. It is a neurotic disorder considered to be a form of hypochondria.
It is estimated that cyberchondria is already as common as classical hypochondria, and soon it will become more common, due to easy access to many unscientific, often dubious sources of knowledge that increase the feeling of anxiety and help to match disease symptoms to the reactions of one’s own organism.
The author of the latest research on cyberchondria – Dr. Thomas Fergus from Baylor University – believes that people who have problems with experiencing uncertainty on a daily basis and unable to deal with unclear situations are particularly vulnerable to this disorder.
Someone who does not like uncertainty, seeking a diagnosis on their own, only gets ‘winded up’. He becomes more anxious, so he keeps looking, listening more and more to his body, more and more often going to doctors, becoming obsessed – explains the scientist.
If such a person lands on the page on brain injuries, they are likely to worry that their headaches, for example, are a sign of a brain tumor, he adds.
Ferguson emphasizes that cyberchondria can have quite serious implications. These can be large, even exceeding the financial capabilities of a given person, expenses for doctors, taking medications on their own, which often ends with poisoning, neglecting daily duties, and as a result even losing a job – he says. For his study, Fergus asked 512 healthy adults, with an average age of 33,4 years, to complete special questionnaires. 55 percent of the respondents were women, 59 percent. had at least a bachelor’s degree, 53 percent worked at least 20 hours a week, and 67 percent. was unmarried.
With the help of the received forms, the participants were to respond to several statements, including: I always want to know what the future will bring, I spend a lot of time worrying about my health, etc. They were also asked subjective assessment of their health (independent of the actual condition) and where and how they search for medical information online.
As the author of the study explains, people looking for an explanation of their health problems come across a huge amount of medical information. Some of them come from very dubious sources. “This behavior causes more anxiety than if we asked the doctor about the same thing or even looked for information in medical textbooks,” Fergus said. – In classic medical textbooks we will not find so many possible diseases at once. On the Internet – yes.
Dr. Fergus’s research was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. (PAP)