Diagnosing Your Own Self

[iRichard]

I always do this. I will come across an article online about a mental illness and I will look at the symptoms, and then I will start to believe it. If I'm feeling any changes in my behavior or my body, then I will go and talk to a doctor. I've done this once about a steroid prescription I was taking, and I didn't feel comfortable taking it. So, it's always a good thing to be cautious.

 

[Ashley0323]

I tend to diagnose myself first.. I google tons of things, and find what fits my symptoms 100%.. I then do tons of research and I will later make a doctors appointment. Sometimes it takes awhile to get in for the appt, but they always confirm what I had initially said. Thankfully only minor things, nothing major or serious.

 

[dysph0ria]

I have taught myself not to do this. Our natural tendency is to be biased toward the scariest diagnosis, hence the joke that WebMD is clearly an oncologist because it always diagnoses you with CANCER.


A lot of knowledge is good, but a little knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all.


If you know nothing, you go to a doctor and trust that opinion. At worst, you'll ask for a second opinion and go with the consensus.


But if you try to educate yourself, well, you don't have the benefit of being regulated by some program that tests your knowledge to ensure that it's adequate. Amateurs don't know that they're amateurs. I've always said the first step to learning anything is to discover that you don't already know it.


They call that the Dunning-Kreuger effect.


It's a bad head-space to be in when you're trying to make a medical diagnosis.


To be properly capable of making a diagnosis, you first have to spend four years of your life merely learning the basic background knowledge you'll need to understand what you cram in your head during four more years of obsessive studying. Then you spend four years completing a sort of apprenticeship.


We have a problem now, because the sum total of all human knowledge is available on the Internet for free. But all that research won't give you the ability to tell if your research is adequately thorough. The Internet gives us a delusion of erudition, but no actual, useful education.


Worst of all, it's full of misinformation. If you search the phrase "Vitamin K shot" you'll find dozens of sites from well-respected "experts" telling you that you should not let them give your newborn baby a Vitamin K shot because it's dangerous and unnecessary. They're dead wrong. Dead wrong. Get it? Dead? As in dead babies? Although these days you won't end up with a dead baby because they'll keep it alive. You'll just get stuck with a special needs child that will never be able to live a normal life because of the brain damage.


If you want to learn how to do doctor stuff, waste 12 years of your life in school. Otherwise, don't poison your brain with incomplete knowledge!


You'll only add to your anxiety because it's kind of a feedback loop. Your anxiety will push you toward the most anxiety-provoking diagnosis!


Blood in the stool? CANCER! Or you ate too many beets, and it's not really blood... just the leftover red pigment your body didn't absorb.

 

[gracer]

It could be really amazing and overwhelming how pretty much everything we need to know all comes with just one touch of a button now. Everyone of us have the tendency to become doctors of ourselves because of all the information we get through the internet. When we are not careful with the information we get though, we become too anxious thinking of a lot of things that could be causing our symptoms, and most of the time cancer is the diagnosis that a person could think of him/herself because almost all individual symptoms that can be felt by us has some connection with the dreaded condition.


It is still best for us to consult our doctors first before we get too anxious on thinking about all the information we got through the internet.

 

[Panic57]

I only do research on mental diagnoses when people start calling me a psychopath, bipolar, retarded, or some other mental issue. I have a hard time sometimes telling when people are being sarcastic and mean or if they seriously mean it. If I find that I might have a problem, I will go to a couple therapists to verify it. My mom was the one that kept on calling out my depression before I researched it and meet with a therapists. But I personally don't know enough about psychology to self diagnose seriously.

 

[Androlo]

Yes, absolutely. This is something which has happened to me recently. Both my daughter and I had taken a trip out into the woods the one day and during that day both of us got bitten by a tick. We both ended up having the typical bullseye rash and become quite ill over the ensuing days. We both had all the symptoms of Lyme disease and after a couple of weeks I became absolutely convinced that I was infected with it and that my daughter may be too. However, after several weeks of winding myself up about it and worrying to no end about the symptoms, I went to the doctor and had all the tests done. The doctor tested for absolutely everything which could be the possible cause of the symptoms; thyroid function, kidney function, liver function, blood count, blood pressure, etc. I was both shocked and relieved at the same time when the results came back completely clear.

 

[cafwen]

While Google is a sure fire way to convince yourself you're dying, the flip side is that there is also information out there that doctors aren't actually aware of too. Doctors are trained about treating ailments with drugs or surgery, that's what they do. They receive a scandalously small amount of training on things like nutrition, and the sad fact is that most of the chronic diseases we suffer from today are a direct result of bad nutrition. So while I will always trust the doctor for acute medical problems, the web helped me realize that I can heal myself too. It's all about balance, doctors and self diagnosis each have their place.

 

[Turdburger]

I do this with mental issues. Sometimes I think I've got BPD and then I change to PTSD. I worry if I'm a sociopath. A psychologist told me that sociopaths don't worry about if they are one or not. As it turns out, physical aches and pains have indicated some bad things. For example, what I chalked up to fatigue turned out to be thyroid cancer. I worry more about conditions I don't have than the ones I do.

 

[Aleece13]

Some people have the tendency of trying to diagnose themselves whenever they notice a symptom within themselves and usually, their self-diagnosis is grave as though they're already dying. I must admit that I am one of those kinds of people at times. Thankfully, after every check-up and after every confirmatory diagnostic tests, I am always wrong with my assumptions.

I'm just curious if any of you here also have the tendency of trying to diagnose your symptoms whenever you get sick or you feel weak. Were your assumptions confirmed or did they always ended up wrong?

I am definitely one of the people who self-diagnose. I turn to google for all my symptoms... Which when I think about it may be my biggest problem. I don't think it's necessarily that everything I self-diagnose is near death stages, but google goes extreme immediately. It is hard to self-diagnose because there are so many health problems with similar symptoms. Anymore I just wait out the symptoms since I'm usually wrong anyways, if it gets worse then I go to a doctor. Haven't been correct about my own diagnoses thus far though.  :smile:

 

[tinnie]

I certainly do this often. It's way too easy with the internet. You just type in your symptoms and you have a whole range of scary stuff that can be wrong with you. I always tell myself, that if my symptoms are caused by something minor and the internet tells me that, it will calm me down. But that's rarely the case.

 

[sorrowscall]

I have a terrible habit of doing this whenever I start to worry for my health. In general, I will reserve my worries until I've visited a proper doctor and had the issue looked at professionally. Sometimes I get worked up to the point where the doctor will have to calm me down and explain it to me slowly. I've taken to not reading about what looks like it might be a symptom for something bad until I've gone to the doctor because of this. It's helped, but I also can't help but wonder sometimes at what cost.

 

[111kg]

Let me put things straight: no, it's not easy with the internet. Doctors spend 4-6 years in the medical school and then some other years in the residency trying to master their knowledge. Diagnosing yourself over the Internet is pretty silly, childish and shows immaturity. A lot of people want to believe that they are suffering from a form of disease to blame their losses on and choose to be desillussional. It's quite sad, truth be told.

 

[listener1987]

I'm glad almost everyone here thinks it's a bad idea to try to self-diagnose! I know there was a thread earlier about mistrusting doctors, and I totally get that. When I went to the ER because I woke up unable to walk, the doctor told me I was trying to get attention. I went to a neurologist and found out I had MS.


But, like @111kg mentioned, doctors have years of training. Isn't it more likely that you will misdiagnose yourself, than a doctor will?


I can say from experience, having family members who self-diagnose is extremely frustrating. They think they know more than doctors; they say they know more than doctors. They say because they've read online articles, they are better informed. They also trust "natural" "doctors" more than others - and naturopaths aren't doctors, and have had less training than an MD. I say, good for you if a naturopath seems to help, but I'm a skeptic that it's anything more than a placebo effect, since many scientific studies refute their claims. I admit I'm a cynic, though. =P

 

[x0xLikeMex0x]

I tend to self-diagnose too, since my previous doctor would pretty much expect me to. She would ask me if I had googled my symptoms and the possible cures instead of looking into the symptoms herself. So I got used to it. It was either self-diagnosis or I "faked" my symptoms in her opinion.


I changed doctors a bit longer than a year ago and my first visit there was a bit awkward since the new doc actually started looking into symptoms and curing me. If I had had the previous doctor at the time, I would've gotten the wrong cure, since I misdiagnosed myself.


If you have a doctor like I previously had - please do yourself a favor and change doctors.

 

[111kg]

I'm glad almost everyone here thinks it's a bad idea to try to self-diagnose! I know there was a thread earlier about mistrusting doctors, and I totally get that. When I went to the ER because I woke up unable to walk, the doctor told me I was trying to get attention. I went to a neurologist and found out I had MS.

But, like @111kg mentioned, doctors have years of training. Isn't it more likely that you will misdiagnose yourself, than a doctor will?


I can say from experience, having family members who self-diagnose is extremely frustrating. They think they know more than doctors; they say they know more than doctors. They say because they've read online articles, they are better informed. They also trust "natural" "doctors" more than others - and naturopaths aren't doctors, and have had less training than an MD. I say, good for you if a naturopath seems to help, but I'm a skeptic that it's anything more than a placebo effect, since many scientific studies refute their claims. I admit I'm a cynic, though. =P

Yep. Governments and corporations spend billions of dollars trying to fix mental diseases and a herb will do the trick for free? It's obviously that it's a placebo that only temporarily deals with the problem and I am really amazed why people fail to understand this.

 

[Countryhalli]

I self-diagnose myself if I think I may just have like the common cold, or a seasonal virus that seems to be going around. If my condition seems to worsen, change, or become unbearable, I will call into my doctor and find out what is going on. I think it can be quite dangerous to attempt to self-diagnose ones self, you may over think it and consume medications that are not needed, or you could shake something off that could be harmful and seriously need attention. A lot of people, myself included like to try natural remedies before spending the money going to the doctor and taking prescriptions, but there are times where you really just need to break down and have a doctor take a look, and if needed do a few tests just to ensure you get proper treatment to become healthy again.

 

[kgord]

It is always good to get the opinion of a real doctor if something is going on with your health. Any fool with a computer can attempt to diagnose themselves, and maybe sometimes they get it right, but it really takes medical tests, and help in order to get the right diagnoses in my opinion. Sometimes even the medical professionals get it wrong, but they are more likely to come up with the right diagnosis in my opinion.

 

[iCapybara]

I rarely, if ever, go to the doctor because... Well, mainly because I'm not sure how to schedule appointments, if I have health insurance, and how much things will cost if I ever did go, haha. I had to go in very recently because I was very sick and had a fever, couldn't eat anything because I'd throw up immediately after, and I was just having horrible fevers--turns out it was a UTI gone rogue so it turned into a bad kidney infection. Normally I take any little thing that I see wrong and blow it out of proportion and my mom always tells me I'm just being crazy but I don't know, sometimes I get really scared. For example, I've had the doctors at school tell me I have scoliosis, and I don't know how bad it is because I've never really had my personal doctor look, but I definitely look off-centered if you look at my hips? I'm not sure how to explain, haha. It's just really annoying to think something is wrong with you and you're really upset about it and then someone brushes you off like it's nothing (even if it is nothing!).

 

[Petesede]

One of the real problems with self-diagnosis is people will often have a symptom or two, look online for a diagnosis, and then sort of agree that they have the other symptoms which they don´t really have, or else they have it in their mind... so like they may cough a couple times which is normal, but because it is a symptom of something they already determined they had, they see it now as a symptom.


I think we are a long way before Google can replace doctors for diagnosis. I spend a lot of time with Lyme´s disease patients and they don´t understand why they were misdiagnosed, and the answer is that there are dozens of diseases with the same symptoms, so a doctor just needs to start with the one that is most likely depending on your particular situation. A smoker with a cough is not going to walk into a doctor´s office and be correctly diagnosed the first visit if it is something rare.

 

[explorerX7]

I have never googled an illness problem in order to diagnose the problem but I do try to self-determine what is may be causing the problem at sometimes. Maybe it's because I have rarely been sick apart from the usual sinus attack. I am thinking it's time to go see the doctor get some regular checkup because I may seem to be healthy but there is the possibility of some chronic disease suddenly overwhelming me without warning.