Towards a sociological understanding of medical gaslighting in western health care

Abstract

In recent years, the term 'medical gaslighting' and accompanying accounts of self-identified women experiencing invalidation, dismissal and inadequate care have proliferated in the media. Gaslighting has primarily been conceptualized in the field of psychology as a phenomenon within interpersonal relationships. Following the work of Paige Sweet (American Sociological Review, 84, 2019, 851), I argue that a sociological explanation is necessary. Such an explanation illustrates how medical gaslighting is not simply an interpersonal exchange, but the result of deeply embedded and largely unchallenged ideologies underpinning health-care services. Through an intersectional feminist and Foucauldian analysis, I illuminate the ideological structures of western medicine that allow for medical gaslighting to be commonplace in the lives of women, transgender, intersex, queer and racialized individuals seeking health care. Importantly, these are not mutually exclusive groups, and I use the term bio-Others to highlight and connect how those with embodied differences are treated in medicine. This article indicates the importance of opening a robust discussion about the sociology of medical gaslighting, so that we might better understand what structural barriers people of marginalized social locations face in accessing quality health care and develop creative solutions to challenge health-care inequities.

Support amid uncertainty: Long COVID illness experiences and the role of online communities

“…For instance, case studies examining gaslighting often feature men as gaslighters and women as targets of gaslighting ( Sweet, 2019 ). Studies of medical gaslighting, specifically, have highlighted how unequal power dynamics and histories of discrimination within healthcare encounters produce contexts in which the health concerns of women are dismissed or invalidated by medical professionals ( Sebring, 2021 ). Women have been significantly more likely than men to report certain symptoms of Long COVID, including headaches and myalgia, symptoms that are often contested and elude medicine's pathological gaze ( Barker, 2009 ; Taquet et al, 2021 ).…”

An online survey of perimenopausal women to determine their attitudes and knowledge of the menopause

“…As a consequence, medical gaslighting was inferred. 23 Medical gaslighting is a term used increasingly in Western medicine by those experiencing invalidation, dismissive, and unsatisfactory care. 24 …”

Long covid and medical gaslighting: Dismissal, delayed diagnosis, and deferred treatment

“…What our data shows is that Long Covid patients mobilize the language of gaslighting to understand their own experience and to frame their interactions with medical professionals. This invocation of gaslighting precedes Long Covid, as past patients have used the language of medical gaslighting to make sense of their experiences with medical professionals, when they have felt that their concerns about their own health and wellbeing have been dismissed ( Sebring, 2021 ). The language of gaslighting calls attention to the “privileging of biomedical expertise over lived experience” (Sebring 1952, 2021 ), where the doctor “as a spokesperson for the institution of medicine, has the power to pronounce what is real and what is not” (Sebring 1956, 2021 ).…”

“…The first point is that the term “gaslighting” is culturally available. Sebring (2021) and Sweet (2019) have noted its recent popularization. We have found numerous mentions of “gaslighting” in essays and news coverage about Long Covid (e.g.…”

“…In effect, Long Covid has galvanized a new movement of long-haulers that seeks treatment, remedy, and recognition of their ailments. Like patients of other forms of contested illnesses, Long Covid patients have criticized medical professionals for “not taking their complaints seriously due to physicians' lack of knowledge about the condition, or the general inability of medicine to provide effective treatments” ( Sebring, 2021 ). In this study, we document accusations of medical gaslighting by Long Covid patients, and analyze these claims as a form of ontological politics ( Mol, 1999 , 2003 ), where patients demand that their reality be recognized and also point an accusatory finger at the distorting effect of experts’ gatekeeping power, which they frame as a form of “abuse”.…”