iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us by Larry D. Ph.D. Rosen

Author:Larry D. Ph.D. Rosen [Rosen, Larry D. Ph.D.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2012-03-26T14:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

You Only Think You’re Dying

When Pain Is Just Pain

My co-worker Tammy is always telling me about these health problems she has. It seems like every time I talk to her she has something new. Her latest ailment is restless leg syndrome, which makes it hard for her to sleep. Now she’s taking one drug that makes her sleep, and another one to calm her legs down. She also believes she has fibromyalgia, and ADD, which she claims is making her unable to concentrate at work. She takes a lot of sick days and when she is here she spends way too much time looking up her symptoms on those health websites. Personally I think she’s a hypochondriac—she just needs to eat better and exercise, and stay off the computer!

—Jan, 35, Torrance, CA

Tammy is one of millions of people worldwide who turn to media to find answers about everything relating to their health.1 Whether it is a health-related website such as WebMD or a late-night television commercial for prescription drugs, Tammy is part of a twenty-first-century trend of seeking advice and answers to physical ailments through media channels rather than in person with health professionals. Some of this information can be helpful and offer talking points for doctor visits, but much of it only triggers anxieties and fears that we are actually much sicker than we really are. Tammy, for example, felt a pain in her side one day and immediately determined it was fibromyalgia, a nerve-related condition that causes body aches and pains through nerve channels. Tammy learned about fibromyalgia from a television commercial for Lyrica, in which a woman her age is seen rubbing her neck, arms, and side and describes an unbearable, persistent pain. Instead of calling her doctor right away, Tammy instead visited a website to determine whether the pain was indeed fibromyalgia or a more serious health problem. Since her symptoms didn’t match the description for the condition, she ended up with the erroneous diagnosis of appendicitis. The website said appendicitis can be life-threatening if not treated immediately, so Tammy called her doctor for an emergency appointment. During the doctor visit Tammy found out she didn’t have appendicitis but had simply strained a muscle picking up a heavy box. But Tammy wasn’t convinced and her online behavior continued. Over time this led to the belief that there was something seriously wrong with her.

Hypochondriasis, or health anxiety, is a psychological disorder that causes people to believe they are ill when they aren’t. According to the DSM, the symptoms of hypochondriasis are:2

1. A persistent non-delusional belief you have a serious illness, despite medical reassurance that you do not, a lack of physical findings to support your belief, and failure to develop the disease.

2. You do not recognize the concern is excessive.

People who have hypochondriasis truly believe they are physically ill, yet there is no evidence to support this. Even when a doctor has found nothing physically wrong, the individual continues to have this belief. To be diagnosed with

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