The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- John Furner
Gaslighting: a term that has become synonymous with toxic relationships.
Most commonly, it’s used to describe a partner’s behavior – actions that trick someone into questioning their own judgement.
Today, the word is used widely on Instagram and Twitter to highlight emotional abuse, and domestic violence charities in the US and UK recognise the phenomenon as a manipulation tool.
But readers may be less familiar with the term medical gaslighting, and the tell-tale signs.
The concept – which means a medical professional is dismissing or downplaying a patient’s physical symptoms – was much-discussed last week, following new reports of the circumstances of Hollywood actor Sharon Stone’s stroke.
The Basic Instinct star revealed to Vogue she was initially not believed by doctors after she had a nine-day brain bleed and stroke in 2001.
Actress Sharon Stone recently revealed to Vogue she was initially not believed by doctors after she had a nine-day brain bleed and stroke in 2001
She suffered a ruptured vertebral artery, which led to brain hemorrhage. The problem is usually caused by some kind of trauma, like a fall, but it can also happen for no obvious reason.
The actor said that doctors missed the signs on her first CT scan, and then ‘decided that I was faking it,’.
It was only after her best friend talked them into giving her a second one that they discovered that she had been bleeding into her brain.
‘My vertebral artery was ruptured. I would have died if they had sent me home,’ she said.
‘What I learned through that experience is that in a medical setting, women often just aren’t heard, particularly when you don’t have a female doctor.’
And it seems women are increasingly keen to speak about it. Search #MedicalGaslighting on TikTok and you’ll find the selection of videos have around 222 million views.
But how do you know if it’s happening to you; and what can you do about it?
Clinical psychologist Dr Kelly E Green often sees the impact of medical gaslighting in her patients.
‘I see severe health anxiety with a lot of my clients – many are kind of brushed off as hypochondriacs.’
The effects, she says, are ‘even more extreme’ than gaslighting in other types of relationships because ‘physicians and doctors and nurses are in a position of high society esteem and power. They’re trusted.
Clinical psychologist Dr Kelly E Green said her daughter was gas lit by medical professionals for a year and a half
‘Patients start to doubt themselves,’ she adds. ‘Not just about their pain, but their own other forms of judgment. They think, well if I’m wrong about this,am I also wrong about this other thing?
‘Since they’re not being believed, they become more focused on gathering evidence, and so they become more focused on their bodies… on every symptom, every thing that feels abnormal, because they’re trying to get someone to believe them. If you tell someone, “Oh, no, that’s not the case,” then they start coming up with all the reasons why it is the case.’
Dr Green said that this can lead to ‘catastrophic thinking and depression’.
She adds: ‘Often isolation also, because when you’re that focused on your physical pain and medical symptoms, you don’t feel like going out, you don’t feel like being social, you don’t feel like tending to the other parts of your life or you might not even be able to, but don’t know why.’
One patient who knows the devastation of medical gaslighting all too well is Dr Green’s own daughter, who suffers a genetic connective tissue syndrome that causes extreme pain and mobility problems.
But for over a year, the condition was dismissed as ‘just anxiety.’ The ordeal began when her daughter was aged seven, and started complaining of intense pain.
SIGNS YOU’RE A VICTIM OF MEDICAL GASLIGHTING
Sharon Stone has spoken of her experience of medical gaslighting following her brain bleed in 2001
Experts say there are a number of red flags that are often dismissed by patients. These include:
- You leave a doctor’s appointment feeling ashamed
- A medical professional interrupts when you speak, or doesn’t let you finish
- You wonder if you’re imagining symptoms
- Health problems are framed as being your fault
- A physician or nurse laughs about your concerns
‘There was so much unexplained pain, some days she would wake up and just be in tears, and say she just couldn’t do it.
‘So we would go to the ER, we would get X-rays, sometimes they would find something, sometimes they wouldn’t.
‘But they would usually send us home, pretty much saying that she was overreacting, or that she was trying to get out of school or that [it] was fictitious.’
This went on for about a year and a half, Dr Green said, until she made one final appointment to see if her daughter had arthritis.
Soon afterwards, she was diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome – a rare genetic condition that explained all of her symptoms.
Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is a rare condition which affects connective tissue. Symptoms include loose, unstable joints that dislocate easily, joint pain and extreme tiredness.
‘Since we got her diagnosis, everything changed,’ Dr Green said. ‘We got her in the right type of therapy, we got school accommodations, we were able to explain to her teachers what was going on.
‘There were still days where she couldn’t walk, but we had a wheelchair. We were able to actually deal with it as a physical medical condition instead of not knowing what was going on, because everybody was saying it was nothing.’
She adds: ‘One of the things that physicians are taught is that if it looks like a horse and sounds like it’s 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. This was the case for 50 year-old Sherri Rollins, from North Carolina.
The mother-of-two was diagnosed with colorectal cancer twice before age 50 but suffered subtle symptoms like back pain, weight loss and gas, which doctors initially blamed on her being ‘hypersensitive.’
Ms Rollins started experiencing back pain in 2017. Though scans showed a lesion on her liver, a gastroenterologist told her it was nothing to worry about.
However, when she went to another doctor a few months later for an MRI, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer – the disease had spread to her liver. Ms Rollins had chemotherapy treatment for about a year before undergoing surgery.
She was in remission for four years before she started experiencing symptoms again – rapid weight loss and painful gas.
Ms Rollins had tumors in her liver, rectum, and pelvic floor. She underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. She is now encouraging others to speak up when they feel something isn’t right
Up until that point, Ms Rollins’ regular scans had come up clear, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
Her oncologist told her: ‘I can assure you, you do not have cancer. You are hypersensitive.’
However, in March 2022, doctors found a tumor in her rectum that had spread to her pelvic floor.
‘I felt let down,’ she said.
Ms Rollins underwent high-dose radiotherapy, surgery and she had an ileostomy fitted for three months – an opening in the abdomen that involves bringing a piece ofthe small intestine outside of the abdominal wall to create a stoma.
Ms Rollins still has some lingering effects from the treatment, such as nerve damage in her hands. She is now encouraging others to speak up when they feel something isn’t right.
She said: ‘I hope that even if one person makes their case for more treatment options and it saves them, then that is why I am speaking out.
‘Being your own advocate doesn’t mean you are a disgruntled patient.’
