There’s nothing physically wrong with you.
But whenever I tried to schedule an appointment, I kept hearing past doctors’ words in my head: I knew that delaying care was potentially dangerous. I didn’t go to the gynecologist for my endometriosis until I couldn’t walk to class. I didn’t seek treatment for what I would later learn was cervical spine instability until I started having trouble breathing. And so, I stopped seeing them for as long as I could. I couldn’t bring myself to trust medical professionals. The fear of being mistaken about my physical symptoms, and subsequently laughed at and dismissed, lingered months after I was diagnosed with two chronic conditions. Some research shows that poor physician-patient relationships have a disproportionately negative effect on women’s care.Ī 2015 study interviewed women who had been hospitalized but were reluctant to seek medical care, citing anxiety about “being perceived as complaining about minor concerns” and “feeling rebuffed or treated with disrespect.” Getting a psychological misdiagnosis can make rare disease diagnostic delayed 2.5 to 14 times longer, according to a survey of 12,000 European patients. This is especially crucial for patients with rare diseases, who already wait an average of 4.8 years to be diagnosed. When doctors mistakenly conclude that a person’s symptoms are ‘all in their head,’ they delay a correct physical diagnosis.
Medically gaslight meaning professional#
When a medical professional leads a person to question their sanity, this can be just as traumatic and abusive.Īnd since it involves the dismissal of people’s bodies - more often, ones that aren’t white, cisgender, heterosexual, or abled - the effects are physical, too. To be clear, gaslighting - the repeated denial of someone’s reality in an attempt to invalidate or dismiss them - is a form of emotional abuse. And yet afterward, whenever I felt my heart pound or my joints ache, part of me wondered - is this real pain? Or is it just all in my head? I thought that receiving proper diagnoses and treatment would cure my self-doubt. I can confidently say that doctors who jump to attribute patients’ physical symptoms to mental illness are too often sorely mistaken.īut doctors hold great power in having the last word in patient’s minds, even long after an appointment ends. Instead of asking “why me?” I can pinpoint the structural shortcomings of an institution that failed me - not the other way around. And patients with more weight are often unfairly viewed as lazy and noncompliant.īy looking at the bigger picture, I’m able to distance myself from the very personal nature of medical trauma.
0 kommentar(er)
