History Of Cyberchondria

Cyberchondria is the constant stress and anxiety concerning the state of one’s health brought on by visiting medical websites. Cyberchondria is a development of the previous issue, hypochondria. Hypochondria being the constant obsession and stress over potential health concerns that have not been diagnosed to them yet. 90% of all hypochondriacs will become Cyberchondriacs when given the access to the internet.

At first, the ability to figure out your own possible health issue was seen as a benefit, saving people both time and money from having to see a physician for their minor issues. But unlike a physician a search engine is not capable of taking in the medical history of the patient, it just takes your symptoms and brings up the more serious issues related to them. Turning a headache into an aneurysm, a muscle twitch into ALS, and a stomach ache into cancer. Cyberchondria became an issue during the technological age; the term became popular during the early 2000’s, due to the overwhelming amount of patients bringing in printouts of their possible health issues to appointments. Patients then started requesting extra tests and procedures that were not necessary wasting both the time and money of the physicians. Although it did not blow up until after about 2008, after Microsoft published an article describing the causes and consequences of Cyberchondria.

Some of the first patients dealing with cyberchondria originated from the United States of America, specifically California, they claimed to have Morgellons disease and majority of the patients who made those claims came prepared with significant proof that the doctors could not rebuttal, and so they did the necessary tests to do their duties as doctors, but when the tests came back negative, all of the patients had become confused. Which relates back to one of the largest reasons why this has become a big issue. Hypochondriacs only came to the doctors with “symptoms” or what they had thought were symptoms whereas now cyberchondriacs are coming to physicians with symptoms and related information to their specific symptoms requesting more than what is required.

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Cyberchondria | HealthyWomen. (n.d.). Retrieved February 21, 2016, from http://www.healthywomen.org/content/article/symptom-search-hypochondria-internet-spurring-health-worries?page=2

Markoff, J. (2008). Microsoft Examines Causes of ‘Cyberchondria’. Retrieved February 21, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/technology/internet/25symptoms.html?_r=2

Starcevic, V., & Berle, D. (2013). Cyberchondria: Towards a better understanding of excessive health-related Internet use. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 13(2), 205-213.