- In the past year, I had diagnosed myself with HIV, lymphoma, ovarian cancer, head/neck squamous cell cancer, a brain tumor, colon cancer,
- One day while voraciously checking out my throat for signs of cancer, I actually saw my epiglottis and though it was a TUMOR!
- Whenever I read about parasites, I think all food and my lovely cats around me have the infective stages.
- The first symptom Jessica McPherson noticed was a weakness in her arms. Then her muscles began to twitch. She feared the worst, suspecting it might be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a fatal neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig disease. But her family doctor provided a much less grim diagnosis: medical school syndrome.
If you are a medical student, especially first year medical student, have you ever been through such situation? Do you usually diagnose yourself, family members, or friends with just simple rash as syphilis?
MEDICAL STUDENTS’ SYNDROME (MSS) is a condition commonly reported by students of medicine and cognate disciplines (such as psychology) involving health complaints arising from medical knowledge rather than an actual pathology. It is viewed as a form of hypochondria.
Boston neurologist Dr. George Lincoln Walton described the condition in his 1908 book Why Worry? “Medical instructors are continually consulted by students who fear that they have the diseases they are studying … The mere knowledge of the location of the appendix transforms the most harmless sensations in that region into symptoms of serious menace.”
MSS is a constellation of psychiatric symptoms that affect the mood and behaviour of a medical student, especially during the first year of studying medicine.
While Medical students are learning medicine they read lists of symptoms for different diseases daily. Although they are completely healthy, they feel that they are suffering from the symptoms of specific diseases and they have it.
Although some might consider medical school syndrome trivial, even comical, mental health experts insist it's no joke. Imagined health problems can cause real anxiety; students patronized for revealing them may hesitate to seek care under any circumstance. This would not bode well for the medical profession, as doctors are already notoriously reluctant to become patients.
Authors of a 2001 paper on the topic claim first-year medical students are hyperaware of their health but that it should be considered a normal effect of their education, not a form of hypochondriasis
Although some students with post-lecture maladies seek help, many don't. But in some cases they should, says Dr. Derek Puddester, a psychiatrist and director of the wellness program at the University of Ottawa's medical school. “If people are becoming very preoccupied with something they heard and it's bothering them, they need to see their family doctor.”
Puddester often hears from medical students and doctors who fear they have cancer or bipolar disorder or some other illness. The most common question he hears is: “Am I depressed?” He takes each concern seriously, as some self-diagnoses, unfortunately, prove correct.
Even students whose worries are unfounded need a safe place to discuss them, says Puddester. Otherwise, they are more likely to ignore real problems that arise later. And the last thing the medical profession needs is more physicians who refuse to enter a doctor's office that isn't their own. “Healthy doctors practise healthier medicine.”
As we are paying excessive attention to science and symptoms, we became very much aware of our body, which transform the diseases to ourselves. Students are encouraged students to record their emotional responses to curriculum in journals, and later reflect on the emotional responses.
