Hypochondria is a condition where a person, due to his own imagination, remains extremely worried about the state of his health even if the medical reports declare him as normal and healthy.
Now doctors, thanks to the growth of Internet, have to deal with another form of Hypochondria like disorder that they refer to as Cyberchondria.
Cyberchondria, in simple English, is wrong self-diagnosis using a search engine. You type your symptoms in Google and, based on what you see on the Internet, self-assume that you are sick.
Paul Valley compares the two health disorders - “If hypochondria is the excessive fear of illness, then cyberchondria is that fuelled by the huge amount of medical information that is now available on the internet.”
NYT further discusses Cyberchondria in detail using the research study [PDF] done by Microsoft that says “self-diagnosis by search engine frequently leads Web searchers to conclude the worst about what ails them.”
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/home/health/cyberchondria-self-diagnosis-on-the-web/5559/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
self-diagnosis is like making a guinea pig out of yourself.
Written by Nagaraj Hubli on 11.25.08
I have also been through this phase and my doc told me that there is so much junk on the net.
Written by Haris on 11.25.08
The methodology in this ridiculous “study” used too measure “cyberchondria” and disease escalation is laughable. This so-called “analysis” is just an attempt to keep up with google’s health search data mining initiative, covered last week in the NYTimes. It makes up the cyberchondria word (like freakonomics) so it will be repeated in the press.
Can you really trust Microsoft to provide reliable, unbiased information?
This “study” would never make it into a peer-reviewed journal. Stick to “pubmed” or medline for quality studies on this topic (of which there are many). Or find a friend on the NY Times staff to print your own junk science opinions.
Also, please remember the fast-growing number of people without any health insurance. Doctors and hospitals won’t work for free (no matter how much ‘pro bono’ work they claim they do). The Internet is all these patients have.
Written by cd ball on 11.26.08