After I created this site, I was amazed by the amount of email it generated. Most of the mail comes from people who have health anxiety and are glad to have found the site. I also get a lot of letters from friends and family of people with health anxiety, who are also glad to have found the site.
Another type of email I didn't anticipate was press inquiries. So far I have been interviewed for NBC nightly news, the Wall Street Journal (1999), Yahoo internet life, the London Observer, BBC Radio, Public Radio, Shape Magazine (UK) and Cosmo (October 2001) and Self Magazine April 2002.
The first few interviews, the Wall Street Journal and NBC nightly news were lame. They wanted to talk about "cyberchondria" and how poor little melissa was so scared by health sites on the net that she couldn't function. They had an agenda and worked what I said into it. They wanted to talk about cyberchondria, and I was a "victim".
That's not the way I look at it. I dealt with my problem, and have helped others deal with theirs. I didn't colapse, I got stronger.
But that probably doesn't sell as many magazines as OMG VICTIM.
The internet intensified my problem and also helped with my recovery.
I have had a problem with health anxiety for most of my adult life. Looking up health sites on the net made it easier to access the information I would use to scare myself.
This is much the same as the way the net makes it much easier to do other things, like research home buying or travel information. The internet did not cause the problem, any more than using real estate web pages for research caused me to buy a house. The intention was there, the internet just makes it more convenient.
Luckily, the flip side is that it is the internet that helped me recover. On anxiety support message boards, I met many people who had the same issues with their health as I did. I looked for more online health anxiety/hypochondria resources, and the pickings were pretty thin. That is when I did my own site.
