Are you an Internet hypochondriac?

William Atkins
Sunday, 30 November 2008 01:53

Science - Health

You may be an Internet hypochondriac, what is known as a Cyberchondriac, if you search the Web for information about medical symptoms and problems you have but, suddenly, they appear to be much more serious than they really are in reality.


Cyperchondria is a combination of the commonly used Internet prefix “cyber-” and the term “hypochondria,” or the psychological condition (phobia) where people exaggerate minor body symptoms and turn them into a fear of more serious illnesses.

When people search the Internet about such minor symptoms that they have, such persons sometimes try to make self-diagnoses and self-examinations of these problems.

With such a preoccupation of such medical problems, they often exaggerate such symptoms.

When this happens, these people might be called cyberchondriacs.

And, now researchers at Microsoft Corporation have scientifically verified such abnormal behaviors.

Ryen W. White, an information retrieval technology expert, and Eric Horvitz, an artificial intelligence research expert, investigated online medical search behavior on the behalf of Microsoft.

They used Internet data from about 250,000 Web users and an employee survey taken by over 500 Microsoft workers as the basis for their investigation.

What did they find specifically? Please read page two.