The Internet and Its Affect on a Person’s Mental Health

Due to the easy access of the internet today, it is easily the first place that people would turn to when faced with a question or concern. This is also the reason why when people are faced with a concern regarding their health, the first place they would consult with isn’t their doctor, but the internet, and why not right? The internet has sources ranging from different blog posts, to medical sites, to various medical journals, which should be enough information for patients to diagnose their symptoms without them even having to step into a doctor’s office.

However, even with the ample amount of information out there, how many of the self diagnosis are correct? A research recently done by Harvard, shows that only 34% of patients who search up their symptoms will get the right diagnoses the first time around; that means 66% of the patients are getting wrong diagnosis. In many cases, getting the right diagnosis on the first try isn’t important. However, if a patient searches up something as simple as migraines, chest pain, twitches, etc. and they are constantly hit with results leading to brain tumours, Lou Grehig’s disease, heart problems then this would definitely effect the mental health of a patient.

According to the study done by Michele Ybarra and Michael Suman “(they) established that two of (…) five respondents try to diagnose themselves using the Internet and one in every three tries to treat [their] health problem” (Ivanova, 2014). This study comes to show that people want to get relieved from their problem and they would even go to any extremes to try and fix themselves. Some people’s mentality when finding out that they think they have a disease it’s not “I need help” but it’s “I should fix myself”; a person’s inner self is fixated on making them feel better on their own.  

Natalia Pletneva did a research on the percentage of people who felt anxiety after their online search to find out possible diseases that they may have and she found out that “30% declared (they had anxiety), 40% of users felt more anxious when searching (…), and claimed their health anxiety increased” (Ivanova, 2014). These results prove that merely searching up your symptoms online can spark anxiety in a single person as it can cause patients to fear the outcomes of what their symptoms could possibly mean. For example, patients will commonly feel anxious because they don’t know if something as simple as a cough can turn into cancer due to the vast amount of information online. However, a person’s curiosity and fear for the worse will always drive them to the internet to self-diagnose their symptoms, and a lot of times actually believing what they read, instead of just consulting a physician.

Aboujaoude, E., & Starcevic, V. (n.d.). Mental health in the digital age: Grave dangers, great promise.

Dr. B.V. Subrahmanyam (2014) CYBERCHONDRIA. Narayana Medical Journal, 3 (1), 33-35. 

Ivanova, E. (2014). Elaborating on Internet Addiction and CYberchondria- Relationships, Direct and Mediated Effects. Primary Teacher Update, 2015(43), 127. Retrieved February 20, 2016.

Reveley, M. (2014). Am I a cyberchondriac? BC Medical Journal, 56(9), 450-451.