The Internet is used a lot to search for information about symptoms and diseases and often serves useful purposes. People search for medical information online because it is easy, results are available quickly, almost any inquiry is shamelessly carried out, the process is anonymous and bypasses administrative barriers. All these factors cause more and more people to turn to the internet for health-related questions and answers.
Unfortunately, this also brings some negative consequences. When online resources are used for self-diagnosis, they can increase anxiety in people without health education. This condition is termed cyberchondria in the literature and is defined as excessive or repeated online search of health-related information that results from the need to alleviate distress or anxiety surrounding health, but instead results in worsening.
Cyberchondria encompasses a range of behaviors. These;
• Excessive checking of health information via the Internet to avoid a health concern,
• Time spent checking health symptoms online affects life,
• Feeling intense anxiety and fear as a result of research.
All these behaviors, which occur with intense health anxiety, form the cyberchondria and cause the mental stress that we create with our own activities.
The majority of health-related websites are fraught with major problems with reliability, quality, and accuracy. For these reasons, cyberchondria increase the anxiety of people about their health status.
It should be noted that online searches will not provide any solution to diseases. There are many factors that should be known before a disease can be diagnosed. Our age, physique, weight, health history are just a few of them, and the information in question is not known to search engines. If so, it should be recognized that the Internet cannot provide a proper report on our problem, and more work should be carried out to understand cyberchondria, taking into account the potential economic costs as well as the health problems it causes.
Research Assistant Semanur OKTAY
