Cyberchondria: Do Online Health Searches Prompt Symptoms (and Worse)? | Mary Aiken

I’m sure everybody knows somebody who searches health-related information online. Well, there’s actually a name for it, and it’s called cyberchondria. Cyberchondria is defined as anxiety induced by escalation during online search to review morbid or serious content.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that you have a headache, and you end up reading about brain tumors. And there’s a very good reason behind it. Humans have a propensity to escalate, to review the worst possible scenario, probably to dismiss it.

So, come back to the headache. 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 search rankings. The point about search is that 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 the best beach in Florida, but when it comes to health-related matters, it’s problematic. Why? Because it causes anxiety, and you could be perfectly well but end up with a nasty case of health anxiety as a result of search.

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 psychosomatic factors. Psyche being mind and soma being body.

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 search—people Googling symptoms.

I’ve published in this area, and I’ve published a paper that actually looks at a phenomenon which I name as cyberchondria by proxy. 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.

Why? You’ve got a pain in your arm. It 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. Is the pain radiating across your chest? Well, it could be. Do you feel tingling in your fingertips? Well, when I think about it, I do. Are you palpitating? Well, of course, I am.

You then rush to your GP, your doctor, and you present with a cluster of symptoms that actually mimic a cardiac event. The point is that doctors don’t prompt symptoms, but artificial intelligence-based systems diagnostic tools do.

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, which are all inherently risky.

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, medical error, infection. 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. Let’s think about that...