Background: Since the beginning of the pandemic, everyone has become aware of their health status. The internet has provided access to feed their curiosity. It has made many individuals hypochondriac and anxious. The hypochondria, due to internet search, is known as cyberchondria.
Aim and Objective: This study aimed to determine the degree of cyberchondria among medical students using the cyberchondria severity scale (CSS).
Materials and Methods: We recruited 763 undergraduate and postgraduate medical students of SCBMCH, Cuttack, for this observational study. We provided them with the printed CSS-15 questionnaire and asked them to fill it out with suitable responses. It had five domains: Excessiveness, distress, compulsion, reassurance, and mistrust. Each of the 15 questions had five options, that is, no way, rarely, sometimes, frequently, and consistently. The responses were ordered from 0 to 4, except for the last domain, where the order was 4–0. We analyzed the collected data using R software (version 4.1.1).
Results: Seven hundred and thirty-two (95.94%) participants with a mean age of 22.73 ± 4.84 years completed the survey. Of them, 548 (74.86%) participants were undergraduate students, and 493 (67.35%) were male. Six hundred and ninety-eight (95.36%) participants were affected by excessiveness, 633 (86.48%) by compulsion, 429 (58.61%) by distress, 307 (41.94%) by reassurance, and 186 (25.41%) by mistrust of a medical professional. The excessiveness domain severely affected 54.23% of participants, followed by distress 32.24%, compulsion 27.05%, reassurance 22.27%, and mistrust 15.57%.
Conclusion: All the study participants were affected by at least one domain of cyberchondria. It has increased their anxiety.
Key words: Cyberchondria; Internet; Anxiety; Hypochondria; Medical Students
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