This post explores how and why medical professionals deny a patient’s condition and refuse to offer help, as well as the difficulties women and people of color face when it comes to receiving appropriate medical care. 

When someone says they are a doctor, they are usually denoted a tacit level of respect that elevates them in the eyes of their companions. However, those who have experienced or witnessed chronic illnesses might begin to understandably lose faith in medical professionals. All doctors and medical professionals are not built equally. While some people truly dedicate their lives to saving and healing others, sometimes at the expense of their personal care, others simply are cashing in on a lucrative business. Irresponsible and sometimes downright lazy practices contribute to the prevalence of medical gaslighting, though sexism and racism also play a role in patients being denied medical care.

Medical Gaslighting Is Real- And It’s Dangerous

Unexplained illnesses in real life are nothing like they are on TV. There is no brilliant Dr. House who will throw out sarcastic remarks but vow to discover the root of your issues with his team of rising medical stars. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a doctor willing to take on your issue if you aren’t responding to conventional treatments or presenting clear symptoms on medical tests. If the illness is invisible, then there is a good chance that doctors might not even believe you are suffering despite crippling pain leaking into virtually every facet of your life.

Many people have heard of the term gaslighting by 2023, but perhaps not when it comes to the context of medicine. Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that occurs when someone causes another person to doubt their reality. Likewise, medical gaslighting occurs when doctors and medical practitioners deny the illness of a patient in its entirety. For example, a patient will explain their physical problem only for a doctor to tell them (with no evidence) that they actually are psychologically unwell and have no physical ailment.

This can also tie into psychologization, or the overemphasis that psychological factors contribute to physical illnesses despite a glaring lack of physical evidence to justify these claims. In short, people are not only being denied medical care but they are being denied their reality. And somehow we’re supposed to nod our heads and accept this treatment because doctors are the ones prescribing it.

Why Aren’t Doctors Helping Chronic Pain Patients? 

There are reasons beyond medical gaslighting that explain the failure of chronic illnesses to be recognized and treated. Not all doctors who fail to recognize chronic illnesses are bad people. Chronic illnesses are expensive and difficult to diagnose. Many doctors simply have a far more limited arsenal than people realize when it comes to diagnosing and treating problems. 

Consider countries with universal health care. Though it may seem like a dream to Americans who have to pay hundreds of dollars for necessary medications, there are also flaws in the system. Doctors who are only paid quarterly to see patients have absolutely zero financial incentive to help people more than four times a year. This can leave chronic pain patients waiting desperate months for appointments only to be written off and asked to return in another three months without a single test or medical intervention. 

Why are doctors stringing people along? Well, they can get the maximum money from these patients without exerting any effort. Seeing patients more than four times a year wouldn’t cause the health insurance to pay any more money for the patient, so the doctor would essentially be spending their time without extra compensation. And in the meantime, they wouldn’t be able to see more patients. 

Let’s say that doctors are trained to treat diseases as “horses.” It makes more sense for doctors to continue to treat everyone who is a horse and responds to the simple diagnoses and treatments that they have been trained to provide for horses. When a zebra comes along, rather than upset the order, doctors simply deny service or string them along. In short, the medical industry is just that- an industry. And it just isn’t lucrative to help people who aren’t getting better. 

Women & People Of Color Are Being Medically Neglected 

It’s safe to say if you’re a zebra living in a horse world, you might feel like you’re going crazy. And those issues might have just multiplied if you are a woman or a person of color living in a white man’s world. Because the reality of the medical system is about to get even more alarming, as both sex and race (or more specifically, misogyny and racism) play a role in how doctors perceive patients. 

A 2021 study from the University of Miami cited in Science Daily states that women’s pain is not perceived with the same regard that men’s pain is. There is evidence of a significant gender bias when it comes to medical treatment, as men and women who express the same amount of pain are perceived in very different ways. Women are more likely to be offered psychotherapy, while men are offered medication for the very same issues. Doctors wouldn’t prescribe therapy for a broken leg, yet this repeatedly is the answer to a woman saying she is in pain. How does that make sense?

Not only is there evidence of potentially significant treatment disparities for women vs. men when it comes to medical issues, but racism also runs rampant in the healthcare system. AAMC writer Bridget Balch wrote a piece on journalist and author Linda Villarose, who traced back centuries of structural racism to today’s health disparities for people of color, namely Black people, when it comes to healthcare in America. 

Villarosa identified centuries of American myths about Black bodies that categorize them as inferior. These dangerous and false beliefs have invaded the modern healthcare system to this day and affect how Black women are perceived by doctors. Racism is therefore a health risk factor for patients who are faced with discrimination and are denied treatment or slapped with unfair blame and doubt when explaining their medical conditions to biased doctors. 

Parting Thoughts About Medical Gaslighting

If you think my take on medical gaslighting is harsh and pessimistic, I wish I could say you’re right. Unfortunately, this is the experience that has become a horror show reality for countless chronic pain patients in America and other so-called first-world countries. People are either denied their realities or blamed for their illnesses in a shocking mass failure of medical professionals.

To play devil’s advocate, some people are lying to doctors for painkillers. Of course, some people are hypochondriacs who are inventing medical issues due to anxiety. (Though this anxiety disorder is extremely rare.) And many doctors likely want to help, but simply don’t know how to. So, they choose to help the patients who are responding to treatments and presenting easy-to-understand illnesses, because that way, they can attend to more people. That certainly isn’t malicious. 

But what are people supposed to do when they visit doctor after doctor and are denied treatment? How are people supposed to live with crippling, undiagnosed pain? Where do people go after they turn to medical professional after medical professional and are denied that their very ailments exist despite the doctor not even looking into their physical problem before declaring it a mental illness? There has to be some kind of reckoning for the people whom society so deeply esteems. 

But who is going to bring about this change? All I can say from my position, at this moment, is that this problem needs to be known. Maybe there is no Dr. House in the real world, but at the very least, patients deserve to be believed by their doctors. While it is one thing to deny medical treatment, it is simply dangerous to write off a patient’s physical ailment due to personal prejudice.

Continued Reading: What To Know About Invisible Illnesses