Cyberchondria: Prevalence of Internet based Self Diagnosis among Medical and Non-medical Urban Indian Population

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Self-diagnosis usually starts with searchengines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, which can lead users toconfusing unsubstantiated information and people with urgentsymptoms may not be directed to emergency care. It can alsocreate anxiety and a situation where there is questioning of thetreating physician. In this paper we focus on understandingand evaluating how Internet based search results have affectedpeople’s health opinions and behaviour.Material and methods: An online cross-sectional pilot studywas conducted among 336 individuals. The statistical toolsused to analyse the data was by using Microsoft Excel. Chisquare test was used and p value <0.05 was taken as significant.Results: A significant number of respondents have triedto self-diagnose a perceived illness with a greater averageamongst the medical group and a significant value amongpeople who believed their online diagnosis to be accurate.Searching for health related advice online did make theparticipants feel more anxious with this trend being greater inthe medical population and more polarised within them.Conclusion: Cyberchondria, an adverse effect of thedigital revolution, also has affected the medical system byinterrupting the line of treatment, elevating anxiety levels of theparticipants, undermining the need for emergency care whennecessary and most importantly, taking assistance of symptomchecker sites in lieu of a physician’s advice. In view of this,symptom checker sites should have more accountability byincreasing the involvement of medical professionals.