To think we are becoming a country of hypochondriacs?

I'm in my late 40s, and when I was a child, people went to the GP far more than they do now. I remember my Mum taking me when I was off sick from school (with just normal bug type stuff) - and if anything, my parents were more on the neglectful side than most. You had far more contact with your doctor, and a family could have the same doctor for years. Now, I very rarely visit the GP, and only if absolutely necessary - not due to resilience, but more because it is such a ballache to get an appointment. They also used to hand out antibiotics more - I remember we had several types of them on multiple occasions, whereas I'm not sure that my kids have ever had antibiotics (apart from eye drops). Maybe having the knowledge that your GP was easily accessible and familiar was comforting, and lessened people's anxiety about their health. Any worries could be reassured very quickly, and you always knew that treatment wasn't far away.

Never self diagnosed in my life i have a range of congenital and chronic conditions all diagnosed by drs. Being disabled isn't a choice

I usually only get the migraine aura, the first time it happened I thought I was going blind. It leaves me feeling spaced out and tired. When I do get the nausea and headache it wipes me out.

It's an interesting premise... I do think that people seem to want medicalise things to a far greater degree than in previous years, but I don't think it's a lack of moral fibre or some other personal failing. I think it's a combination of:

1. people's health is worse, due to more sedentary lives and typically more processed diets.

2. when you feel a bit crap now, you can easily google the 1million possible medical causes. Or see people who have similar issues on social media talking about how they solved it with XYZ branded item!

3. it's very difficult to be able to see an actual doctor and get tests etc to see what is going on - which is not me slagging off the NHS, but my own experience of how emergency medical issues vs chronic medical issues are dealt with.

4. i think there's a huge prevalence of low level depression these days - and little wonder given how the shittyness of the world is shoved into your brain through social media.

I think it's just human nature - people want to believe they have something medical rather than it's just the world they live in is shit, as that means maybe there is a way to feel better!

Two things at play here I think:
Firstly, our advertising used to focus on products making us more attractive, smell better and live a better life. Now the sell is that their stuff is the only way to avoid erectile dysfunction and incontinence pads.
Secondly, offices used to be freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer - many of us remember having to sit next to the chain-smoker as the office junior - but poorly configured air conditioning and LED lighting do aggravate conditions. At an office (before lockdown) someone had an epileptic seizure due to the lighting and many staff took to wearing green eyeshades like a small army of poker players to combat the migraines.

Couldn't agree more. People don't have enough to do so self diagnose every ache and pain and then clog up waiting rooms and A&E. Don't get me started on the whole "is it safe to eat" brigade!

I’ve been travelling on the tube for 50 years and never once seen the emergency button used.

Yep and @mnhq just allows it

Another goady as fuck thread by a brand new poster who then buggers off.

MN sinks lower everyday.

I have health anxiety diagnosed by a psychiatrist years of therapy . So i don't understand why you think people with health anxiety don't go to the drs that's like saying people with social anxiety or gad don't go to the drs

Every cough is a chest infection. The ones who say I have health anxiety don't go to the GP to get help with their mental health issues.

Or because the OP is deliberately goady.

Presumably you were older during lockdown and had experienced many years of adulthood where if you had a mild cough you just cracked on with it. “Young people” did t have that life experience behind them. If they were 16 or 18 when the pandemic hit it’s not really very suprising if they flake at the sign of a minor bug. They were ordered by the government to do so in a formative part of their lives. Obviously they need to learn to get over it, but it’s not exactly suprising.

As someone who gets migraines, I do get annoyed with people who claim every headache is a migraine.

On the other hand, you're talking bollocks about WFH and migraines.

Migraine triggers for me include lack of sleep, lighting, temperature, smells, food (not what I eat but when I eat).

I can control those very easily at home to prevent migraines happening and work full time.

Fortunately since my employers aren't dicks, I've been working from home full or part time since 2018.

Fuck me, another day, another "I've never experienced X/Y/Z/ and have so much resilience I'm a superior human being allowed to make generalisations about "problematic people" and encourage the pitchfork mob to put the boot in" post.

I'm relatively healthy for my age and thank my lucky stars every day for that. Mental health not so great, so I'm "problematic" in some ways I suppose, however I have friends and family with chronic / severe conditions and their struggles with "resilience" pretty much have come about due years of neglect and mismanagement by our failing health service which could have addressed things early but didn't. Grind a person down and then blame them for lack of "resilience" eh?

The word "resilience" makes my teeth itch, frankly. It's bandied about like a weapon. It's becoming shorthand for determining superiority and it's frankly tedious.

And to the poster upthread "profiling" these people by personality or whatever the fuck that's supposed to be, what next? Measuring skulls? I see you.

No doubt we have problems, physical, mental, environmental and economic that are creating a big picture that ain't pretty. But listen to yourselves, those of you pointing at people experiencing lives different and harder than your own. People ask how the Holocaust happened. This thread is a bloody object lesson.

Have my bingo card at hand with "hyperbole" "Godwins law" and my favourite "word salad" if anyone deigns to respond to this rant - also mayonnaise or the dressing of your choice at hand.

This comes to you courtesy of waiting for ineffectual phone calls with health professionals because I'm currently juggling three elderly people with chronic mental and physical health conditions whose management has been so shoddy as to be life threatening for the last year in the case of two of them. And nobody does anything, and it goes on and on and on.

And that is the lived reality for thousands of people. FFS have a little compassion and if you don't know what it's like keep your divisive fever dreams and speculation to yourself.

But the original post had an article in it about a woman with diagnosed health issues, so how is that missing the point? Also, how do you propose we all find out if someone is faking or not? I'm sure a vanishingly small minority of healthy people (if any) would pretend to have a disability, purely because of how vile disabled people are treated by people who have decided they're faking based on something arbitrary.

Well said this is the reality of what people don't see and then when you've used all your annual leave on hospital appointments you get to do the rest unpaid which when your working a minimum wage job and have to travel 4 hours to a hospital appointment it costs a fortune because you can't drive and you can't trust hospital transport as they have a habit of just not turning up and you miss your appointment so you need to take more time of work unpaid

I love how people focus on one thing and run with it.

Ive found that there are 2 sets of people in the world when it comes to illness/conditions. They're either the cans or the cants. The cans accept they have limitations and work to find what does work to manage it the best they can and how to get around the obstacle and there's the cant's, who make their illness/conditions their entire personality and write themselves off.

I mean I can hand over my medical conditions so you can check how you cope?

You'll have to inject yourself with one drug once a week, that'll give you 24hrs of flu symptoms as it's a bone marrow stimulant used while on chemo but I take it for another reason

The other is every 5 weeks and you'll get fatigue and your hair will fall out, it's also high risk for anaphylaxis

Add paracetamol, codeine, morphine, naproxen and thyroxine plus 4 antihistamines a day to that

You'll be exhausted with constant infections, high risk of sepsis and gynae pain that no pain relief controls, probably feel like you're mid stage labour half the month

Oh and you'll work 40hrs a week for min wage while people tell you how much of a snowflake and how lazy you are. Don't forget to book time off for hospital appointments which uses up all your annual leave

Like most people all the conditions i have are diagnosed. What do you mean challenge my diagnosis do you want to see my medical records their 1000s and 1000s of pages spread across 4 trusts in this country alone not counting what has been sent internationally. I'm in multiple case studies do you want me to carry all this round in a suitcase for you

I think hypochondria and serious issues are being confused on this thread because OP chose a very poor example.

Firstly, it wasn't actually me who posed the hypotheses! Secondly and more importantly, there is no such thing as a burden of proof on an internet forum. We aren't in a court of law. If we were then the poster I was responding to would be in hot water with their own unsubstantiated claims and accusations.

I agree with you.

I had a comment deleted from a popular Tiktokers page when she talked about her jittery anxiety while chugging her I think she said 4th or 5th Starbucks coffee of the day, I asked her if maybe reducing her caffeine and sugar intake wouldn't make her feel a bit better?!

I'm sorry for those that feel that people being skeptical is making their life harder - but ignoring or denying that there are a lot of people swinging the lead is also ignoring that those are the people actually making it more difficult for you, not those that roll their eyes on the internet about it!

Really @Viviennemary

You know the nazis murdered disabled people? Have a read of this and educate yourself

https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/disabled-people/

People are missing the point.

Of course there are people with diagnosed conditions and nobody is saying those diagnoses aren’t valid.

But more and more we have people saying things like “I suffer from migraines (when they have a headache; “I have the flu” (when they have a cold; “I have undiagnosed ADHD.” Erm if you don’t have a diagnosis then this is an assumption not a fact.

Nobody is allowed to challenge anyone any more. Someone gets on the tube and asks for a seat because they have a disability and no-one moves, and instead of accepting that there really are some truly ignorant people out there, the poster is shouted down because every one of those people must have an invisible disability and how dare you assume otherwise. And while of course there will be people on that train with a disability, the several hundred people absolutely do not have an invisible disability and the majority really are just ignorant.

People use the word “ableism” to shut down any kind of discussion, when actually it’s people with disabilities who need to question why those without seem to feel the need to claim disability status which undermines those who genuinely have issues, because there are now so many that no-one is taken seriously any more.