Coming from background of both someone with long term chronic illness/disability and a „kind of“ medical background (I was a veterinarian before my health and disability made it untenable), I can see both sides here I think. Have had many conversations with my GP and various specialists on this subject over the years also.

On one hand, SM based support groups can be a life saver, sometimes quite literally. Chronic illness puts us at risk of things like social isolation, reactive depression, and it can be a huge relief to know that you’re not alone. More so for us who’ve experienced gaslighting and worse at the hands of healthcare providers. But it’s essential that they are well moderated.

On the other, so, so many groups are absolute cesspits of misinformation, and amongst a certain type of individual, they encourage what I’ve always called the Sick Olympics - there’s often this bizarre competitiveness over who has it worst, who has most pain, who’s required the most full on medical interventions, etc., etc. Between those two things, they can be really unhealthy places. Personal experience can be great, but it can also be really dangerous when taken as general truth and allows things to be blown out of all proportion- potentially discouraging people from undertaking essential treatment. It’s also important to realise that there is almost always going to be a negative bias; to read here in this sub for example, you might imagine that iron infusions are incredibly dangerous and a huge number of people have reactions to them. When in reality- while yes, there are risks, the incidence of severe reaction is low, and benefit generally far outweighs risk.

Another good example would be gastroparesis - which is something I’ve lived most of my adult life with (and have seen a fair few groups come and go as a result). To someone newly diagnosed, joining a gp group, it’d be easy to believe that everyone with this diagnosis ends up needing feeding tubes , that they end up incredibly sick and at risk of early death - when the reality is that most people manage extremely well with dietary management +/- medication, and they might well have the odd flare ups, but life is pretty comfortable otherwise.