Research Article Prevalence of Cyberchondria among Outpatients with Metabolic Syndrome in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Southern India Priya Pawar, 1 Ashok Kamat, 1 Gavishiddhayya Salimath, 2 Kiran Rose Jacob, 3 and Rajesh Kamath 3 1 Department of Psychiatric Nursing, KAHER Institute of Nursing Sciences, KLE University, Belgaum, India 2 Department of Child Health and Nursing, KAHER Institute of Nursing Sciences, KLE University, Belgaum, India 3 Prasanna School of Public Health, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India Correspondence should be addressed to Rajesh Kamath; rajeshkamath82@gmail.com Received 21 June 2022; Accepted 9 September 2022; Published 26 September 2022 Academic Editor: Daiji Endoh Copyright © 2022 Priya Pawar et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. In today’s world, Internet-based medical information plays a significant role in patient education. ere are several accessible health-related websites. It has become common to search Internet before going for a medical consultation. e main objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of cyberchondriasis and its association with demographic variables. Methods. A cross-sectional study was carried out among metabolic syndrome patients attending the cardiology, endocrinology, and neurology outpatient departments of a tertiary care hospital in South India. e prevalence of cyberchondriasis and its constructs were measured using the cyberchondria severity scale (CSS). Inferential statistics revealed no statistically significant difference in the average CSS scores across sociodemographic variables. Spearman correlation was conducted to determine the relationship between the constructs. Results. A total of 379 participants with metabolic syndrome were included in the study. 42.5% of them were severely affected, and 28.0% were moderately affected by cyberchondriasis. Among the constructs studied, compulsion (85.7%), distress (91.8%), excessiveness (96.6%), and reassurance (76.1%) constructs had an impact on a greater number of study participants, compared to mistrust of medical professional construct (33.0%). Cyberchondriasis had a significant relationship with the history of myocardial infarction (p value  0.03). ere was a statistically significant positive linear relationship between mistrust and reassurance (r s  0.169, p value<0.001). Reassurance had a significant negative linear relationship with distress (r s −0.147, p value  0.004). Con- clusion. In India, cyberchondriasis is a growing public mental health issue. Awareness among the general population is necessary to minimize the possible outcomes of cyberchondriasis like anxiety and depression. Screening individuals for possible risk factors is recommended. 1. Introduction In today’s world, Internet-based medical information plays a significant role in patient education. e use of Internet as a source of health information has rapidly increased [1, 2]. Internet has become a popular means of accessing health information because it is quick, easy to use, anonymous, and relatively inexpensive [3]. Using Internet for health information can lead to misdiagnosis and exploitation [1, 4, 5]. It has become common to search Internet before going for a medical consultation. People find information that drives them into anxiety and distress. is phenomenon is referred to as cyberchondria. Cyberchondria consists of four core dimensions: In- ternet searches for medical information repetitively (ex- cessiveness); increased negative affect (distress); interrupted daily living (compulsion); and engendered reassurance seeking. Individuals tend to develop disorders such as health-related anxiety and depression in response to the information obtained from online sources [6]. More than half of the walk-in patients in a hospital had Hindawi e Scientific World Journal Volume 2022, Article ID 3211501, 5 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/3211501