Do you think the media is partly to blame for health anxiety?

[Jabberwoxx]

This isn't really seeking help for anything, more of a discussion point.

It seems to me quite obvious that the media and the internet are partly to blame for increasing health anxiety and hypochondriasis. I know we are probably more predisposed to worrying about our health in general (likely due to other disorders such as GAD, OCD, depression and stressful life issues) but I can't help feeling quite annoyed that the media can really make the most common and mundane or symptoms seem life-threatening and warranting an immediate doctor's trip.

It puts me in a difficult position because while I think it's excellent that we're now more alert to symptoms, it shouldn't be that every single possible symptom could automatically indicate cancer. For example, on the bowel cancer ad, the alarm symptom is 'diarrhoea or blood for more than three weeks'. For lung cancer, it's 'a cough for more than three weeks'. It seems that commercials such as these isolate one extremely common symptom as an extreme cause for concern which naturally makes people panic, especially us HA sufferers. Some adverts don't even take into consideration age, lifestyle or genetic predispositions.

Additionally, you hear stories all the time of how people are misdiagnosed as having IBS when in fact they had cancer, or had been dismissed repeatedly by their GPS, only to be undergoing life-threatening emergency surgery later. It is likely that we as anxiety sufferers focus our attention on these stories more than most, but I also think sensationalism is partly to blame as well.

I'm not sure I'm getting across what I'm trying to say clearly enough, but does anyone here feel that the media is partly responsible for their health anxiety?

[Agadch]

Yes, I agree completely! If I'm googling a symptom on my laptop, lets just say a pain in my right arm, before I've even finished typing the sentence google has a list of results up. Straight away I see a link about heart attacks and how they're a "silent killer." I thought heart attacks were associated with pain in your left arm? If I actually did have a pain in my right arm I'd probably be convinced I was having a heart attack right now! Another thing, I was sitting in the waiting room at my doctor's last week and saw a poster for bowel cancer. It said on it "the longer you leave it the bigger the problem." Straight away I started worrying about it. I started thinking what if i had symptoms but just wasn't noticing them. What if I was leaving it and soon it would be too late? Us health anxiety sufferers aren't safe anywhere, not even at the GP's office!

[Carnation]

Yes, definitely. Its in your face all the time, especially on the TV. Adverts about Cancer, Heart Attacks, Strokes, MS. Soaps like Corrie with Hayley Dying and Dramas with people dying. Programs about Doctors, Hospitals and a new one about Dentists. The News featuring Crashes, Deaths, War etc. And the constant reminder about pollution, Disease, Floods, and anything else they can scare the Life out of you with.
Years ago, you just got on and lived. Went to work, went down the Pub and had a good time. People don't go out anymore. They sit on their computers, generally on their own, stressing out about Life!

[Jabberwoxx]

Yes, I agree completely! If I'm googling a symptom on my laptop, lets just say a pain in my right arm, before I've even finished typing the sentence google has a list of results up. Straight away I see a link about heart attacks and how they're a "silent killer." I thought heart attacks were associated with pain in your left arm? If I actually did have a pain in my right arm I'd probably be convinced I was having a heart attack right now! Another thing, I was sitting in the waiting room at my doctor's last week and saw a poster for bowel cancer. It said on it "the longer you leave it the bigger the problem." Straight away I started worrying about it. I started thinking what if i had symptoms but just wasn't noticing them. What if I was leaving it and soon it would be too late? Us health anxiety sufferers aren't safe anywhere, not even at the GP's office!
I agree so much about the ''silent killer'' thing. Often you hear people have had cancer for years, but when they're diagnosed, it's too late. Generally I think heart attacks are associated with your left arm, but it's rare that a heart attack happens out the blue anyway, there is nearly 100% of the time a definite cause such as smoking, drinking, high blood pressure, etc.

I know someone who had bowel cancer and he definitely had some very obvious symptoms such as weight loss, abdominal pain, throwing up every time he ate, etc. That's just one person I guess, but I've known a couple of people with cancer and their symptoms have been very clear-cut.


Yes, definitely. Its in your face all the time, especially on the TV. Adverts about Cancer, Heart Attacks, Strokes, MS. Soaps like Corrie with Hayley Dying and Dramas with people dying. Programs about Doctors, Hospitals and a new one about Dentists. The News featuring Crashes, Deaths, War etc. And the constant reminder about pollution, Disease, Floods, and anything else they can scare the Life out of you with.
Years ago, you just got on and lived. Went to work, went down the Pub and had a good time. People don't go out anymore. They sit on their computers, generally on their own, stressing out about Life!

It's a shame really. Years ago, without the media, I think there was much less depression and anxiety. People know too much. Ignorance truly is bliss. :(

We've recently very sadly had Stephen Sutton die at 19 from bowel cancer. Although he is a role model and we should aim to adopt his carefree attitude if cancer does strike any of us, I find it served to fuel my anxiety because bowel cancer is so rare and to have it at 15 is just so cruel and unfair. I don't think I could have the attitude he had, I'd crumble. :(

Funnily enough, I've just noticed that both sides of my throat/neck are swollen and it hurts to swallow/move my neck. I know darn well if I googled it, I'd get something like 'cancer of the lymph nodes' so I'm avoiding it like the plague. Doesn't stop me being up at 2am though! :P

[KeeKee]

I definitely agree with this and my worst site is the dailymail as it nearly always has articles on the ultra rare and they were either ignored by doctors or had no symptoms until too late.
Also hate when there are articles with warning symptoms that we simply shouldn't ignore and the doctor says it's normal! I feel like us with anxiety need to determine for ourselves whether something is real or not which isn't fair.

[googler192]

I totally agree with this and with KeeKee. Daily mail is terrible for making me anxious! So is webMD! Yet I still look! I'm my own worst enemy!

[Humly]

Yes and the internet. I remember one time, in the days before we were all on the internet, going to the public library and looking in medical books to try and diagnose myself and it was so much better. There would be a brief no nonsense explanation and that would be the end of it. But now its just all in your face all over the place telling you that you've got to catch things early or you are going to develop some nasty disease and die! No wonder those of us who are anxious have such a hard time. I wonder how our kids will turn out having been brought up with all this information available to them via their phones etc. Instead of asking us parents they can just look on the internet and see all manner of scary stuff and inaccurate information and who knows where that will lead!

[Jabberwoxx]

I definitely agree with this and my worst site is the dailymail as it nearly always has articles on the ultra rare and they were either ignored by doctors or had no symptoms until too late.
Also hate when there are articles with warning symptoms that we simply shouldn't ignore and the doctor says it's normal! I feel like us with anxiety need to determine for ourselves whether something is real or not which isn't fair.


I totally agree with this and with KeeKee. Daily mail is terrible for making me anxious! So is webMD! Yet I still look! I'm my own worst enemy!

The Daily Mail has been a nightmare for me too. They might be exaggerating or distorting the stories though. I've read at least three articles such as the ones you've described. It's awful.

I have been seeing a haematologist for three years for neutropenia, and even though each time my blood indicates nothing wrong, they're keeping an eye on me anyway. Yet I've read articles where people have displayed very obvious signs of bowel cancer yet were dismissed because of age. Granted, a colonoscopy isn't a nice procedure to go through and I guess they shouldn't have to screen every single person with symptoms, but surely they must know.


Yes and the internet. I remember one time, in the days before we were all on the internet, going to the public library and looking in medical books to try and diagnose myself and it was so much better. There would be a brief no nonsense explanation and that would be the end of it. But now its just all in your face all over the place telling you that you've got to catch things early or you are going to develop some nasty disease and die! No wonder those of us who are anxious have such a hard time. I wonder how our kids will turn out having been brought up with all this information available to them via their phones etc. Instead of asking us parents they can just look on the internet and see all manner of scary stuff and inaccurate information and who knows where that will lead!

The media makes people believe that cancer is practically inevitable. That's how I see it anyway. I understand it's more common now than it ever used to be, but the media portrays it to be something that can strike anyone, anytime - which is true to a degree, but there are ways of saying things.

[unsure_about_this]

I agree with KeeKee Daily Mail is bad, some of those articles are very scary.

Before late 2009 or could have been 2008 I never searched anything on the Internet about health. life was good, than boom just one article just one article started it all off, and it was an important one, self testicular exam/penile cancer, than I just kept googling different types of cancer, reading daily mail online, cancer research, macmillan etc.
this followed my Dad doing a bowel screening because of his age in 2012, kept this one secret in 2014.

In the early 2000s cancer research ads did not scared me.

Now we got things like social sites where some people do post things (not mention these social sites/blogging websites to many to list)

[Deepthinker]

Yep, I agree! We are on information overload at times! Lol! The rare cases are what we hear about, but we have to remember that there are billions of people on the planet that don't have whatever the latest rare illness is.

[Mrschurchill]

DEFINITELY!! Daily Mail, which I look at everyday mind you, scares me with their articles. Especially people who go to the doctors 30 times and get dismissed then have terminal cancer :( I don't mind self awareness campaigns but why shove it down our throats! X

[luc]

Unfortunately the mail sells papers because people want to read these stories. I try not to read any of their or their equivalents emotive drivel. I also decline my mothers offers of Bella, Best or their likes as I have learnt in time that reading about the man who dies the day after a mole appears or the woman who has a cyst the size of 10 grape fruits does me no favours.

[Mrschurchill]

It's the unnecessary information. I read the other day that if you have more than 15 moles on your left arm (I have tons from light treatment for psoriasis) you are 35% more likely to develop breast cancer.... Which is by a mile my biggest worry at the moment. Why does ANYONE need to know that?!? Yeah tell me that sunbeds cause skin cancer and smoking causes lung cancer but don't tell me about moles giving me breast cancer when I don't have control over that!! I was so upset after reading that - idiots! :( x

[KeeKee]

MrsChurchill if it makes you feel better, it did say that they think the possible cause could be something to do with an increased amount of a particular hormone in people with lots of moles and your moles are caused from treatment not hormones. Something around those lines, but I have lots of freckle type ones on my left arm aarrgghh!

[Mrschurchill]

Aw thanks Keekee that does help a lot :) x

[luc]

Why the left arm?

[TheHusband]

I don't believe we had less anxiety sufferers years ago. The doctors were ignorant of it, and it was labelled hyponcondria (in the sterotypical, bad, way).
People suffered in silence and had miserable lives.

I do believe the media sensationalise every possible weird illness, and feed us poorly-researched information about how to detect it. They then edit the article to make it seem more plausible, and more risky, lest it seem too commonplace and dull.
But I know that anxiety would exist even without the widespread awareness of illnesses and symptoms, because anxiety is due to an imbalance of chemicals in the brain that lead to you thinking the wrong way about things (gradually over time).

Say I lived in 1850 and had never heard of the word "cancer". If I had the imbalance of hormones inside me, I'd begin to feel anxious, and would start to look around (subconsciously) for an outlet for this emotion.
Perhaps I would start to worry "oh no, I've got consumption" or maybe just a plain simple "help I think I'm dying".
Ignorance of medical facts wouldn't stop the anxiety. Perhaps I'd fear I had been cursed by a devil.

But yet, the media is doing a bad thing, and I wish they'd stop. Not that it would mean people suffered from anxiety less, though.

---------- Post added at 22:53 ---------- Previous post was at 22:53 ----------

P.S. Someone mentioned a colonoscopy earlier. They are fine, no bother at all. Having piles is much, much worse, I can assure you.

P.P.S. Even if the Daily Mail had no health articles I would urge you PLEASE not to look at it or buy it. Seriously.

[UKmamainUS]

I avoid pretty much ALL media completely. I never noticed it affect my health anxiety but it did make my general anxiety so bad it pretty much paralyzed me. I couldn't think, I couldn't leave the house, I couldn't make plans. Every now and again I get exposed to the news and within minutes I regress. I think for me personally my HA comes in part from the bloody pamphlets they have strewn all over the doctors office waiting room. LOL

---------- Post added at 17:59 ---------- Previous post was at 17:56 ----------

MrsChurchill - I read that too and I have at least 40 on each arm. Iif I find out I have BC I am more than content to get them removed. The one media thing I do see is Facebook and I have actually requested my friends sensor what comes up on my account, most of them do, and do not include me in updates that will scare me. Obviously not all do, that's how I found out about the mole thing.

[Fishmanpa]

The Media is news. News needs readers. The news needs to contain something that will draw the reader or listener in.

What's more likely to do so?

Man/Woman diagnosed with cancer after years of misdiagnosis (rarer than finding a 5 carat diamond in a pile of rocks)

OR

Man/Woman given a clean bill of health.

Simple, but makes my point.

Positive thoughts

[ANXMAX]

Yes! The media definitely plays a huge role in people's health anxiety. TV commercials advertising drugs (the US media is especially bad for this) with their side effects... it's like they are putting symptoms into people's head. I wish I could just live life not knowing about any diseases. As far as the internet goes... somewhat of a role... I google the smallest pain and it comes up with the deadliest stuff. And yes, those websites with stories of silent killers and "five signs you have cancer" etc want us to click, so they can collect their $ for the ads, so they play on our fears and anxieties to make money, which is waaay wrong. Most ads and commercials, tv shows and news do so.

[MyNameIsTerry]

There is also the national campaigns by health services which focus on such as cancer to educate people of the signs. Then you go to your GP to be told that these are also symptoms of many things.

Education may be needed so people take things more seriously but it just seems like scaremongering people over something they most likely haven't got.

[CleverLittleViper]

Absolutely.

I remember when I had a fear of my teeth-either losing them, or losing the enamel on them. Because of the adverts on TV that suggested that having a transparent tip on your teeth is abnormal and a bad sign, I rushed to the dentists in a tizzy.

You know what the dentist said to me? Having a transparent edge to your teeth is normal and natural, and everyone has them, except for those that chemically whiten their teeth. He said that the adverts are just trying to make money by convincing people that something that's healthy and natural is wrong. Scandalous, I think.

I've blocked a ton of "medical" websites such as WebMD, RightDiagnosis, MayoClinic, NHS, because of how ready the information is available and how easily someone with HA can misinterpret what it's actually saying. I think with how readily the information is available to us, it can be dangerous for people with HA. All you have to do is plug in a few of your symptoms and you can diagnose yourself with cancer or whatever nasty Google conjures up, based on limited symptoms.

That's part of the problem. We go to google in search of things, or turn to the media, before we even think of going to the doctor. By the time we get to the doctor, we're so convinced it's some serious nasty that when they tell us it's nothing, or its anxiety, we don't believe them. I think, from now on, my doctor will be my first port of call. Not google, and not the media.

[Mindknot]

Google and the Internet age has had such a phenomenal impact on the everybody's lives really, trouble is that it is now so accessible for everything that most people are more likely going to Google the answer to a question than use their heads. I'm totally guilty of this, for example if I want to convert cm to inches or something I could do the calculation or I can type convert 5cm into inches into Google and get an instant answer. I've not even allowed my brain a look in. And in a way I think it's the same with HA your body observes that your arm hurts and before you even know it you've either automatically turned to the Internet for an answer, or the subconscious part of your brain says "wait, i've seen this somewhere“ and hauls up a reference to some column in the newspaper you might have skimmed over at some point, or snippet from a TV programme, and reliably "informs" your brain that it must be a heart attack. Before the actual thinking part gets a look in, and says well actually I've had reports from the hand that we were sleeping on it a bit funny last night.

It's basically an evolution I think of the flight or fight reaction, but we are so constantly bombarded with information from every source that it becomes more difficult to rationalise it in that instant when anxiety kicks in. And of course as all anxious people know, the difficult part is getting rid of that instant association before it starts cycling around your brain getting bigger all the time.

So I wouldn't entirely blame the nature of the media, as Fishmanpa pointed out, sensationalising is what it does, but I agree it would be a lot easier for HA sufferers if our culture didn't involve so much constant bombardment with this stuff, as some of it's bound to skulk in to your subconscious.

[Rennie1989]

The media has a history of scare mongering, I agree, but I think it's more than just the media.

So we have tabloids saying 'This and that gives you cancer' and 'EBOLA CRISIS!!!' but we have to remember that these headlines are to sell papers, not to correctly inform us. We have to learn to accept this and not take them too seriously.

Whilst I applaud the work that the NHS does I do think their awarenesses and 'what to look out for' can create anxiety. I have gone to the doctors umpteen million times to get moles checked because of the ABCDE method.

The internet is a forever expanding source of information and literature. There is information on diseases and conditions from a children's level right up to doctorate level. There is also conflicting information too, because what is uploaded onto the internet is not regulated well enough. Then there are the ridiculous databases of symptoms that tell you that the anxiety attack you're suffering from is a stroke and the depression is leukaemia. Unless you're clear minded (ie not in a state of anxiety) and have an understanding of medicine this can cause more harm than good, just for the purposes of money.

It comes down to us. What do you want to listen to? What do you want to believe? If you think that your cough is Ebola when you have not left the UK then you need to stop reading the papers. If you think an acne spot is the first stage of malignant melanoma you need to get off the internet. It's about being rational.

[Female healthanxiety]

YES, yes and YES!

I don't even watch things like the news, or hospital programmes!

I'm even drawn to the word heart attack, stroke, etc.

I know avoidance is probably the wrong thing to do, but I don't want anything waking my anxiety monster up, so think it's better to be safe then sorry.

I hate when I hear and see things, it constantly plays on my mind and somehow feeds the monster.

Instead of Googling however, now I put in the search engine, dizziness and at the end put no more panic, so it takes me straight to NMP. That way I feel like I am still googling but better still it always takes me go posts similar to my symptom!

[pringles]

In the old days if you were ill you went to the doctor. If you put that you have a little pain immediately comes up with suggestions i.e. cancer!!!!

[MyNameIsTerry]

I remember when I had a fear of my teeth-either losing them, or losing the enamel on them. Because of the adverts on TV that suggested that having a transparent tip on your teeth is abnormal and a bad sign, I rushed to the dentists in a tizzy.

You know what the dentist said to me? Having a transparent edge to your teeth is normal and natural, and everyone has them, except for those that chemically whiten their teeth. He said that the adverts are just trying to make money by convincing people that something that's healthy and natural is wrong. Scandalous, I think.



I've had this too. I only started to wonder about my teeth because my dentist left and I didn't register elsewhere for 15 years and these adverts all started to come along. So, I registered and she didn't even mention it!

I really think those ads should be banned as they are selling you something that you don't need. I'm surprised they make it past the BCAP code but I guess its because they work in terms of the other ingredients but I still think this should be amended to stop this misinformation.

---------- Post added at 06:17 ---------- Previous post was at 06:15 ----------




I don't even watch things like the news, or hospital programmes!



Holby City - go in with a cold, come out in a box! Someone goes in with a minor niggle and is later told them have some form of heart defect...which hasn't bothered them for the last 50 years of their lives! :huh:

[firecracker777]

I absolutely agree!!