Do people initially when they get diagnosed or it's, you know, broached that this might be what's going on, do people get angry or offended and, and think that, um, you know, their, their symptoms aren't being taken seriously? Like what's the response you've seen play out?

Depends.

Some people, they're probably already on the way to acknowledging that this is an anxiety problem when you explain how this works and that health anxiety is a real illness, that can be taken quite well.

But for a lot of people it's not.

They do feel dismissed, they feel like doctors or health professionals are saying it's all in their head.

And when you're worried about your health, it might also be related to other experiences you've had in your life with the health system.

We know that people with health anxiety often have either witnessed or experienced themselves being dismissed and having misdiagnoses in their loved ones, and that leading to catastrophic consequences.

It's been modified in certain key ways.

These days, Dr. Google, how much has the internet and the old Dr. Google exacerbated this phenomena?

Well, it is exacerbating it because all of that health information is at our fingertips without any barrier in place.

So you're right, in the old days, people would have looked at encyclopedias or gone to the library to search for health information and to search for the diagnoses that they were worried they might have.

Whereas now we can easily just jump on our phone or our computer and get access to the whole of the internet.

And the problem with that is Obviously, it's accessible 24-7.

We can do it any time of day or night.

But the information is variable in its quality.

So what can they do?

And you don't know what the toolkit is, whether it's dialectical behavioral therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy or, or what, which we have an evidence base, but-You don't know what toolbox they're pulling from, from.

Yeah, exactly.

And the evidence base might differ.

One might be recommended over another.

So I tested it out also around OCD-type symptoms, and I was testing it out and saying, "Is it normal to repeatedly check locks over and over again?" And the tool came back to me and said, "Well, that could be a sign of anxiety, or it could be a sign of OCD, and here's the strategies I suggest." There was things about, you know, setting a routine, setting a particular time of day when I check the locks on my house.

But then the second strategy it suggested was mindfulness, and then the third was cognitive behavioral therapy.

That's actually not the right order in which we need to treat OCD.

What's your kind of takeaways?