Gaslighting: A term that has become synonymous with toxic relationships.
Most commonly, it is used to describe a partner’s behavior: actions that cause a person to question their own judgment.
Today, the word is commonly used on Instagram and Twitter to highlight emotional abuse, and domestic violence charities in the US and UK recognize the phenomenon as a tool of manipulation.
However, readers may be less familiar with the term “medical gaslighting” and its illuminating signs.
The concept – meaning: a A medical professional who ignores or downplays a patient’s physical symptoms was widely discussed last week after new reports emerged about the circumstances surrounding Hollywood actress Sharon Stone’s stroke.
The Basic Instinct star revealed Fashion Doctors initially did not believe her after she suffered a nine-day brain bleed and stroke in 2001.
Actress Sharon Stone recently revealed to Vogue that doctors were initially in disbelief after she suffered a nine-day brain bleed and stroke in 2001.
She suffered a ruptured vertebral artery, which led to a brain bleed. The problem is usually caused by trauma, such as a fall, but can also occur for no apparent reason.
The actress said doctors missed the signs on her first CT scan and “decided I was faking it.”
It wasn’t until her best friend convinced her to give her a second one that they discovered she had a brain bleed.
“My vertebral artery was ruptured.” “I would have died if they had sent me home,” she said.
“Through this experience I learned that women are often simply not heard in the medical environment, especially when there is no female doctor.”
DailyMail.com has discovered that Sharon Stone’s experience is not rare. In fact, some studies suggest that up to 70 percent of American women have experienced medical gaslighting.
And it seems that women increasingly want to talk about it. Search for #MedicalGaslighting on TikTok and you’ll see that the selection of videos has been viewed around 222 million times.
But how do you know if this is happening to you? and what can you do about it?
The clinical psychologist dr. Kelly E Green often sees the effects of medical gaslighting on her patients.
“I see serious health fears in many of my clients; many are dismissed as hypochondriacs.”
The consequences, she says, are “even more extreme” than gaslighting in other types of relationships, because “doctors, doctors and nurses enjoy a position of high prestige and power in society.” They are famous.
The clinical psychologist dr. Kelly E. Green said her daughter was gassed by medical professionals for a year and a half
“Patients begin to doubt themselves,” she adds. “Not only about their pain, but about their own other forms of judgment.” They think: If I’m wrong about this thing, am I wrong about the other thing?
“Because they’re not believed, they’re more focused on gathering evidence, and so they’re more focused on their body…any symptom, anything that feels abnormal, because they’re trying to get someone to believe them. “. . . If you tell someone, ‘Oh no, that’s not the case,’ they’ll come up with all kinds of reasons why it is.”
Dr Green said this could lead to “catastrophic thinking and depression”.
She adds: “Often isolation is because when you’re so focused on your physical pain and medical problems, you don’t feel like going out, you don’t feel like socializing, you don’t feel like taking care of others not. “Parts of your life, otherwise you might not even be able to do it, but you don’t know why.”
One patient who knows all too well the destructive effects of medical gaslighting is Dr. Green’s daughter, who suffers from a genetic connective tissue syndrome that causes severe pain and mobility problems.
But for more than a year the illness was dismissed as “just anxiety”. The ordeal began when her daughter was seven years old and complained of severe pain.
Signs You Are a Victim of Medical Gaslighting
Sharon Stone spoke about her experiences with medical gaslighting after her brain hemorrhage in 2001
Experts say there are a number of warning signs that patients often ignore. This includes:
- You leave a doctor’s appointment feeling embarrassed
- A doctor interrupts you while you are talking or does not let you finish
- You wonder if you are imagining your symptoms
- Health problems are portrayed as your fault
- A doctor or nurse laughs at your worries
Dr Green told DailyMail.com: “There were days she said she couldn’t walk because she was in so much pain, or she fell a bit and ended up thinking she broke something.”
“There was so much inexplicable pain that some days she woke up, burst into tears and said she just couldn’t do it.”
“So we went to the emergency room, we had X-rays taken, sometimes they found something, sometimes they didn’t.
“But usually they’d send us home and basically say she’s overreacting or that she’s trying to quit school or something.” [it] was fictitious.’
It took about a year and a half, dr. Green until she made a final appointment to see if her daughter had arthritis.
Soon after, she was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that explained all of her symptoms.
Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a rare disorder that affects connective tissue. Symptoms include loose, unstable joints that dislocate easily, joint pain and extreme fatigue.
“Everything has changed since we received her diagnosis,” Dr. Green. “We got her the right therapy, we got her school accommodation and we were able to explain to her teachers what was going on.”
“There were still days she couldn’t walk, but we had a wheelchair. “We were actually able to treat it as a physical illness rather than not knowing what was going on because everyone said it was nothing.”
She adds: “One of the things doctors learn is that if it looks like a horse and sounds like a horse, it’s probably a horse. But sometimes it’s not a horse, sometimes it’s a zebra.”
In some cases, medical gaslighting can be life-threatening. That was the case for 50-year-old Sherri Rollins from North Carolina.
The mother-of-two was twice diagnosed with bowel cancer before she turned 50, but suffered subtle symptoms such as back pain, weight loss and bloating, which doctors initially attributed to her “hypersensitivity”.
Since 2017 Ms. Rollins suffered from back pain. Although scans showed a lesion in her liver, a gastroenterologist told her it was nothing to worry about.
However, when she went to another doctor for an MRI scan a few months later, she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer; The disease had spread to her liver. Mrs. Rollins underwent chemotherapy for about a year before the surgery.
She was in remission for four years before experiencing symptoms again: rapid weight loss and painful bloating.
Mrs. Rollins had tumors in her liver, rectum and pelvic floor. She underwent chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. She now encourages others to speak up when they feel something is wrong
Up to this point Ms. Rollins’ regular scans showed clear results, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Her oncologist told her: “I can assure you that you do not have cancer. “You are too sensitive.”
But in March 2022, doctors discovered a tumor in her rectum that had spread to her pelvic floor.
“I felt abandoned,” she said.
Ms Rollins underwent high-dose radiation therapy, surgery and had an ileostomy, an opening in the abdomen in which part of the small intestine is moved out of the abdominal wall to create a stoma, for three months.
Mrs. Rollins still has some after effects from the treatment, such as nerve damage in her hands. She now encourages others to speak up when they feel something is wrong.
She said: “I hope that I will also speak up if someone advocates for more treatment options and gets them done.”
“Being your own advocate doesn’t mean you’re an unhappy patient.”
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
