Medical Gaslighitng Causes Harm to Patients

Medical gaslighting is not a new issue but is being brought into the limelight because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Long-standing gender, race, and socioeconomic bias in medical care and research, as well as a system that teachers medical professionals “to discount patient symptoms (Moss),” continue to contribute to detrimental outcomes for patients with an increase of medical gaslighting.  One would think that when a 14-year-old teenage boy who had lost 40 pounds, was throwing up multiple times per day for months, and could not keep his food down would be a serious situation for doctors to address. It was for his parents who struggled to find their son help by taking him to many doctors, the ER multiple times, and was hospitalized multiple times.  Nothing showed up on any tests completed by his doctors so they told his mother that it was “all in his head.”