Are you a ‘Cyberchondriac’

Are you a ‘Cyberchondriac’?  I know a couple of people that are hypochondriacs to begin with, and I noticed over the years that easy access to all of the “learned” medical information available on the internet has only fueled the flames.  There recently was an article about it on the CNN web site:

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — First-year medical students are some of the biggest hypochondriacs around. Bombarded with information about every disease under the sun, they start to imagine they have them all. In their minds, every mole is skin cancer. A nosebleed is surely a sign of a tumor. Headache? Must be skyrocketing blood pressure.

“People get terribly anxious,” says Dr. Arthur Barsky, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “One woman who came to see me was convinced she had melanoma. She brought in 20 pages of color photos of various skin lesions, trying to figure out which one looked most like hers.”

And now, because of the Internet, we can all be first-year medical students. We can all develop what’s called “medical student syndrome.” We get basic information, and not necessarily a lot of context, and we’re off and running toward a conclusion that may be completely wrong.

Of course, health information on the Internet can be truly useful. But how do you know when you’re using it constructively, and when you’ve gone off on a medical wild goose chase? “I think it’s fairly easy to cross that line,” says Robin DiMatteo, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

So how do you know when you’ve become a “cyberchondriac”?

To read the rest of the article, go here.

As for me, I think I’ve learned to take what I read with a grain of salt, and learn from it appropriately (I hope), and of course, discuss it with my doctor.

~ by Thor on December 23, 2007.