Name: Cyberchondria: Do Online Health Searches Prompt Symptoms (and Worse)? | Mary Aiken
Uploaded: 2017-09-24T21:53:28.000Z
Duration: 5 min 41 s
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I’m sure everybody knows somebody who searches health related information online.

Adverbs of manner

Well there’s actually a name for it and it’s called cyberchondria.

Basic passive voice

Cyberchondria is defined as anxiety induced by escalation during online search to review

Well it means that you have a headache and you end up reading about brain tumor.

And there’s a very good reason behind it.

Humans have a propensity to escalate, to review the worst possible scenario probably to dismiss

If you went to your doctor and you said I have a terrible headache and your doctor said

well, you could have anything from a hangover to a brain tumor.

You would say oh my goodness, talk to me about the brain tumor.

And essentially that’s what happens online.

People click on the worst case scenario and therefore those scenarios get driven up the

So the point about search it’s based on a frequency model, things that are frequently

clicked are those things that actually rise to the top of search results.

That’s fine if you’re looking at best beach in Florida but when it comes to health

Because it causes anxiety and you could be perfectly well but end up with a nasty case

So the thing is if there’s something wrong with your car and you Google it or search

it inherently you’re not going to do any damage to the car.

But in terms of bodily symptoms, the very act of searching can bring about or instigate

So you can believe to feel that you are actually suffering from some terrible condition.

If you put any body part now into search what you will see is pages of tumor and cancer.

And, in fact, just a month or so ago on Google’s official blog they have well, owned up to

the issue and have also told us that one percent of all online search actually relates to medical

I’ve published in this area and I’ve published a paper which actually looks at a phenomenon

And that is people searching health results of others.

And the thing is if you survive the initial search and you get to the intuitive diagnostic

websites that prompt symptomatology it actually can make the problem worse.

Could be from carrying a heavy bag or a harsh workout in the gym.

You go online and you’re led through this decision pathway.

You then rush to your GP, your doctor, and you present with a cluster of symptoms that

The point is that doctors don’t prompt symptoms but artificial intelligence based systems

There’s a great paper called hypochondriacal hermeneutics and the paper argues that the

doctor-patient relationship is a hypochondriacal exercise in its own right.

One person sitting there talking about symptoms and the other trying to interpret them.

And effectively if you appear or manifest with this perfect cluster your doctor has

got no choice but to put you in the pipeline for intrusive, diagnostic, investigative procedures

A report came out recently that was published in the BMJ that has stated that iatrogenic

death is the third cause of death in the USA.

Iatrogenic would cover – it’s a catchall for problems in terms of taking medication,

So it’s death by accident within the medical system.

But in my book I note and of course I’m aware of causation correlation but there’s

a very interesting trend that iatrogenic death has increased fourfold between 1999 and 2011

and actually shadows the growth of the internet.