Medical gaslighting

Medical gaslighting is term used to describe doctors or medical practitioners who blame a patient's illness or symptoms on psychological factors, or deny a patient's illness entirely. Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse which involves persistently denying or refusing to accept facts, and frequently leads to the other person doubting their own experiences.

Mental health
People experiencing gaslighting often begin to question their own reality or may feel "crazy", particularly if the person gaslighting them has greater authority or personal power. Gaslighting almost always involves multiple incidents and is particularly effective if several different people gaslight the same person. Victims of gaslighting may become anxious, depressed or emotional as a result, which makes them more likely to be seen having unreliable or questionable judgement, both by others and themselves, discrediting them further.

Gaslighting by medics is more commonly experienced by certain patient groups, particularly women, and in illnesses which do not yet have a clear diagnostic tests, for example ME/CFS, chronic pain, and endometriosis. This form of gaslighting may be done either consciously or unconsciously.

ME/CFS
People with ME/CFS typically experience healthcare professionals who dismiss or ignore their health problems, or attribute their ME/CFS symptoms as coming from a psychological rather than physical cause, leading to inappropriate treatments.

Similar behavior is experienced by patients with certain chronic illnesses, particularly those that also disproportionately affect women, such as endometriosis, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and medically unexplained symptoms (sometimes called persistent physical symptoms). People with long COVID are also reporting gaslighting by medics.

A number of researchers who promote the biopsychosocial model of ME/CFS have been described as gaslighting ME/CFS patients and intimidating ME/CFS advocates, and research has shown that health professionals routinely suggest or provide inappropriate and harmful treatments, wrongly suggest that a patient's ME/CFS symptoms result only from psychological factors or from a mental health condition such as depression, anxiety, or somatization, or that symptoms are in some way "all in their head"—regardless of the symptoms or history that the patient has.

Notable studies and publications

 * 2003, THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT: PERSECUTION OF PATIENTS? A consideration of the role of Professor Simon Wessely and other members of the "Wessely School" in the perception of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in the UK - (Full text)


 * 2008, Obstructions for quality care experienced by patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)—A case study (Abstract)


 * 2015, THIRTY YEARS OF DISDAIN: How HHS and A Group of Psychiatrists Buried Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - (Full text)


 * 2016, "Cognitive behavioural therapy in the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome: A narrative review on efficacy and informed consent" - (Full text)


 * 2016, "Chronic fatigue syndrome: is the biopsychosocial model responsible for patient dissatisfaction and harm?"


 * 2017, Epistemic injustice in healthcare encounters: evidence from chronic fatigue syndrome (Full text)


 * 2019, Legitimizing myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: indications of change over a decade  - (Abstract)


 * 2019, Dismissing chronic illness: A qualitative analysis of negative health care experiences - (Full text)

News and articles

 * 2018, Memoirs of Disease and Disbelief Porochista Khakpour’s deliberately unheroic “Sick” raises questions about what we expect of female patients with chronic illness - The New Yorker

Articles and blogs

 * How doctors gaslight women into doubting their own pain - VICE
 * Have You Been A Victim Of Medical Gaslighting? - Jo Moss
 * If you spend 20 years gaslighting your patients, perhaps you should think twice before accusing *them* of trolling *you* - psychologist Brian Hughes
 * Trial By Error: Some Thoughts on Long-Covid, ME/CFS and MUS - David Tuller

Learn more

 * EXPERT Q&A When Medical Symptoms Are Dismissed as 'All in Your Head' - David Tuller
 * A Narrative Review of the Impact of Disbelief in Chronic Pain (2013)