What is Self-Medication?

by GoMedii Technologies Health Consultant

Self-treatment or self-medication is the treatment of self-diagnosed disorders, diseases, or symptoms. Self-medication can be defined as continued or intermittent use of a medication that is prescribed by a physician for chronic or recurrent symptoms.

 

 

 

It covers a wide range of diseases, from a headache or common cold to complex diseases like psychoneurological or cardiovascular ones and even cancers.

 

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Health-Related Information By Google:

 

 

Researchers from the University of Surrey, led by Dr. AfroditaMarcu investigated whether women sought health information online when experiencing potential breast cancer symptoms and, if so, whether they found it useful. Interviewing 27 women, aged between 47 and 67 years old, researchers found different levels of engagement with the internet for health information that was driven by a range of attitudes and levels of trust.

 

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Some women, particularly those who have no formal educational qualifications or with fewer were found to be negative about the the usefulness of ‘Dr. Google’ and were against using the internet for health information, They claim that this could lead to unnecessary worry or misdiagnosis about what their symptoms might mean.

 

 

 

During the research, researchers also found that women, open to using the internet for health-related information, reported feeling overwhelmed about it. The majority of women who experienced such feelings went to see their doctor, mostly because they felt that only professional doctors could resolve concerns about their symptoms and provide appropriate answers.

 

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Dr. AfroditaMarcu, Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, said: “The internet is a valuable source of medical information. However, it also contains a lot of bad quality information or information which cannot be easily understandable by a layman or applied to every individual situation, so it is not surprising that some people feel that cannot trust it.

 

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The Self-Medication Hypothesis:

 

 

The self-medication hypothesis starts appearing in medical journals in the 1970s, as doctors noticed that drugs (heroin) addicts were using the medicines to cope with problems like stress and loneliness. This lead to the idea that medicine use develops as a way of managing stress in the absence of meaningful social relationships and adequate solutions.

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Created on Aug 16th 2019 05:31. Viewed 261 times.

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