Cyberchondria adds £420m to NHS costs

CYBERCHONDRIA, where people look up symptoms on the internet, could be fuelling rates of health anxiety, experts say.

Health anxiety is estimated to cost the NHS more than £420 million a year in outpatient appointments alone, alongside the cost of tests and repeat GP appointments.

A team of researchers is now calling for health anxiety to be more widely recognised as a condition and for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to produce guidelines on managing it.

It’s estimated at least one in five people attending hospital outpatient appointments suffers from health anxiety, although only one in 10 are ever diagnosed.

Dr Helen Tyrer, a senior clinical research fellow at Imperial College London, said the condition was characterised by feelings of fear and worry that were not alleviated despite reassurance from doctors.

She said health anxiety was often triggered by an event, such as the patient suffering a health scare, somebody in their family getting ill or dying, or a celebrity their age dying or getting sick.

“They become convinced they have or are developing a serious underlying disease, or that an existing medical problem is much more serious than it is,” she said.

“These beliefs are held despite all medical evidence to the contrary.”