Cyberchondria: Living in virtual environment for health concern

Cyberchondria is a grave mental ailment using excessive internet to get solution for health issues. People may develop health anxiety and perform self-diagnosis for any medial problem and get relaxed if it is not lethal. Cyberchondria is ugly face of technological progression in global environment.

 

The Internet is filled with wide range of information about health conditions and when people use internet for excessive search related to disease, it may turn into a mania, and it may develop mental condition, Cyberchondria. It is a phrase used to designate the propensity to insistently check Internet sources for health-related information about conditions that create anxiety. According to psychology experts, researching health topics is most popular online activities in technologically driven society.

 

It is found in plentiful psychological studies that an individual who spontaneously searches the Internet for information about particular real or imagined symptoms of disease may come under the grip of cyberchondria. Presently, such online activity is most common among teens and youth.  Main ground of digging information from internet is that it provides some relief from the health-related anxiety but this relief is temporary and when the person goes away from the computer, the anxiety erupts.

 

It is evident in several Psychological researches that people who are overly distressed or anxious about their health perform repeated health-related searches on the Internet. This pattern is termed as cyberchondria. It is observed that People who suffer from hypochondria make frequent doctors' appointments, insist on unnecessary tests, and see physical illness. Such people may develop unhelpful behaviours such as avoiding exercise, resting excessively, taking unnecessary drugs, avoiding medical information, making their health a major topic of conversation, irritating their friends and relatives by frequently seeking reassurance regarding their health, spending hours on the internet researching their physical and /or mental symptoms, possible diagnoses and treatments.

 

Professionals stated that cyberchondriacs share common characteristics such as:

Prone to anxiety and/or obsessive compulsiveness. This occurs in middle-aged or in youngsters. People, who are worried, may spend a lot of time to check their symptoms and disorders and then ask their doctor for treatment for the same.

 To avoid this condition, it is recommended to stay away from computer. To stop cyberchondria condition, people may go for cognitive behavioural therapy. It involves training the mind to replace its negative beliefs and thought patterns with more positive ones. Relaxation training is also useful for person with hypochondria to combat feelings of anxiety, obsessive thoughts about physical discomfort.

It is always better to take proper advice from their doctor.

 In nutshell, there are numerous health websites that offer extensive information to users about symptoms, causes, prevention and treatment of disease. These websites plague huge number of people suffering with cyberchondria which is a serious health anxiety of new era.