Self-Diagnosis: A Digital Age Phenomenon - Essay Sample

Introduction

Current, the concept of self-diagnosis has become so popular, especially on the youths. In this case, any health issues that appear in their life, they want to establish the cause and solution using the internet. Development of technology has become an essential platform where people conduct self-diagnosis. Normally, authors and health experts publish various articles on health online. Therefore, users are using these platforms to hence their knowledge on health issues. Anxiety is another key aspect that influences why people conducts self-diagnoses. The essay reviews the application of internet and wrong analysis during self-diagnosis.

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The internet has become an essential learning platform. As such, it has become a good environment where individuals suffering from various health conditions seek assistance. Usually, not all health conditions that require clinical treatment. Some conditions are effectively treated using activities people engage or food they take. Currently, the concept of self-management apps has become so popular in various parts of the world (Barrett, London, Kroger, Hall, & Baratz, 2013). Most people are using these apps to boost their understanding of their health conditions. According to (Barrett et al. (2013), some people are receiving effective cognitive-behavioral therapy in these apps. Cost is a critical technique which may hinder people from seeking medical care. However, through the application of the internet and other health apps, people are able to conduct self-diagnosis even when they are at home. In some cases, people are not willing to share their problems with health practitioners face to face. Nevertheless, through the application of internet, people can easily directly search their problem even without communicating with anyone. In this case, the establishment of symptom checkers apps gives people a chance to understand their problems since the system is equipped with algorithms that ask several questions about their conditions (Semigran, Linder, Gidengil, & Mehrotra, 2015). For instance, I once suspended that the food I consumed was the cause of my stomachache. In the assistance of an online website, I was able to diagnose my health state by searching all symptoms that I was experiencing.

On the other hand, the application of self-diagnosis is faced with several challenges. At first, the application of self-diagnosis increases chances of wrong analysis. In this case, looking symptoms online increases the chance of the wrong diagnosis since a person may miss some critical connection between signs of a particular condition (Barrett et al., 2013). Due to lack of enough knowledge and experience about health conditions, it is challenging for a person to differentiate some unique symptoms. According to Semigran et al. (2015), there are several cases which have been reported whereby a person administered wrong treatment. Some people have developed stress and worry since they are not sure if they conducted the right diagnosis. Additionally, the internet has become an essential earning platform. Therefore, people are using their websites to gain popularity. As such, they may provide wrong health information which may mislead the user. This concept is highly brought by lack of knowledge about which websites are trustworthy.

Based on the understanding, the benefits of self-diagnosis outweigh the challenges. Due to the availability of a good network and devices, people use self-diagnosis as their first step during their medical care. As such, through the concept of self-diagnosis, it is much easier for a patient to seek further treatment if the condition is not good. Understanding the condition will create a good environment where a doctor and a patient can discuss the issue.

References

Barrett, S., London, W., Kroger, M., Hall, H., & Baratz, R. (2013). Consumer health: A guide to intelligent decisions (9th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

Semigran, H. L., Linder, J. A., Gidengil, C., & Mehrotra, A. (2015). Evaluation of symptom checkers for self diagnosis and triage: audit study. bmj, 351, h3480. Retrieved from https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3480.full.