"[15] In 1997, The Times wrote that "Mental health experts...have...nicknamed them the ‘worried well’—too disturbed to sail through life's challenges but too well to warrant medical treatment.
[8][17] In the 1980s, government campaigns following the arrival of AIDS in the United Kingdom provided genitourinary clinics with drastic increases in the amount of patients wanting to get tested for HIV.
[20] In 2017, research by Imperial College London discovered that the worried well in the UK may be costing £56,000,000 (US$72,000,000) to the National Health Service because of unnecessary appointments with general practitioners.
They estimated that up to 1 in 5 people attending medical clinics had abnormal health anxiety, which has possibly been worsened with the increase in cyberchondria—people who have researched their symptoms online and use it as evidence that they have a life-threatening disease.
The use of telemedicine is filling this gap in some communities.The negative connotations associated with the perceived feelings of inappropriate use of health services has led some to advocate for the term to not be used, arguing that it reflects the idea of there being a 'deserving' and 'undeserving' class of people.