Hypochondria Never Dies

The diagnosis is officially gone, but health anxiety is everywhere.

- Meghan O'Rourke

At breakfast the other week, I noticed a bulging lump on my son's neck. Within minutes of anxious Googling, I'd convinced myself that he had a serious undiagnosed medical condition-and the more I looked, the more apprehensive I got. Was it internal jugular phlebectasia, which might require surgery? Or a sign of lymphoma, which my father had been diagnosed with before he died? A few hours and a visit to the pediatrician later, I returned home with my tired child in tow, embarrassed but also relieved: The "problem" was just a benignly protuberant jugular vein.

My experience was hardly unique. We live in an era of mounting health worries. The ease of online medical self-diagnosis has given rise to what's called cyberchondria: concern, fueled by consulting "Dr. Google," that escalates into full-blown anxiety. Our medical system features ever more powerful technologies and proliferating routine preventive exams-scans that peer inside us, promising to help prolong our lives; blood tests that spot destructive inflammation; genetic screenings that assess our chances of developing disease. Intensive vigilance about our health has become the norm, simultaneously unsettling and reassuring. Many of us have experienced periods of worry before or after a mammogram or colonoscopy, or bouts of panic like mine about my son's neck. For some, such interludes become consuming and destabilizing. Today, at least 4 percent of Americans are known to be affected by what is now labeled "health anxiety," and some estimates suggest that the prevalence is more like 12 percent.