Medical gaslighting: conceptual and theoretical foundations, 2026, Noble

Dolphin

Dolphin

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
link.springer.com

Medical gaslighting: conceptual and theoretical foundations - Social Theory & Health

Medical gaslighting is a term that is frequently found in gray literature but rarely found in formal literature. Thomas However, Gaslighting is a term that
link.springer.com link.springer.com


Medical gaslighting: conceptual and theoretical foundations​

  • Original Article
  • Published: 07 January 2026
  • Volume 24, article number 1, (2026)
  • Cite this article

Abstract
Medical gaslighting is a term that is frequently found in gray literature but rarely found in formal literature.

Thomas However, Gaslighting is a term that has been examined in scientific literature, typically in relation to intimate partner relationships. I compare the concepts gaslighting and medical gaslighting in literature to identify critical distinctions and develop the following conceptual definition for medical gaslighting: Medical gaslighting is an interpersonal phenomenon involving a healthcare professional and a patient within which the healthcare professional trivializes, psychologizes, or dismisses the patient’s subjective bodily symptoms and health concerns. This leads to delays in care, medical mistrust, doubt in the reality of one’s bodily experiences, and medical trauma.

Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action and Foucault’s conceptualizations of power are proposed as theoretical underpinnings to the phenomenon of medical gaslighting in order to contextualize the antecedents which make the phenomenon possible and lay the groundwork for future studies that I hope will aim to quantify and mitigate its effects on the health of marginalized populations.
 
Dolphin said:
Medical gaslighting is an interpersonal phenomenon involving a healthcare professional and a patient within which the healthcare professional trivializes, psychologizes, or dismisses the patient’s subjective bodily symptoms and health concerns. This leads to delays in care, medical mistrust, doubt in the reality of one’s bodily experiences, and medical trauma.
Click to expand...
Surely the definition of gaslighting has to include something about the professional being wrong?

And objectively measurable signs can also be dismissed on the wrong reasons.
 
Gaslighting as I understand it from the film, which I haven't seen, is more than trivialising, it's persuading the person to believe lies and to learn to distrust their own experience as a method of coercive control.

That's what the directive CBT and GET aimed to do. They tell the pwME their symptoms are misinterpretations of normal healthy niggles, and PEM is healthy response to deconditioning and exercise can't harm us. All lies aimed at control of how we fill in questionnaires and to deny us help.
 
Trish said:
Gaslighting as I understand it from the film, which I haven't seen, is more than trivialising, it's persuading the person to believe lies and to learn to distrust their own experience as a method of coercive control.

That's what the directive CBT and GET aimed to do. They tell the pwME their symptoms are misinterpretations of normal healthy niggles, and PEM is healthy response to deconditioning and exercise can't harm us. All lies aimed at control of how we fill in questionnaires and to deny us help.
Click to expand...
I think it is this aspect of what has been done to us that is most odious and damaging, and it is this aspect that the wider public needs to understand. I think if there is a breakthrough and a change in perspective because of that, many people will be absolutely horrified that this could have been policy- to lie to people and manipulate them in this way as a 'treatment'.
 
BACME in the UK are still doing it. They are telling pwME inaccurate biological explanations of ME/CFS, and claiming the strategies they teach like sleep hygiene and stress reduction and pacing up are directly effective at stabilising and then improving the underlying illness by addressing these alleged biological causes. It's all lies and leaves pwME thinking they are on the path to improvement if they do it right. We have all seen and many of us experienced the physical and psychological damage that does.
 
Meh. Medical gaslighting is systemic and encouraged, it's literally an official thing made with intent and purpose. Nothing interpersonal about that, and completely different from intimate relationships, especially as in the case of medical gaslighting the physician is not acting in a personal capacity but holding a sort of quasi-office imbued with powers legitimated by the state, giving them literal power of life and death and the documentation of what happened. The only person in there is the patient, the physician is not making personal decisions here.

It's the same act of denying reality but that's as far as the comparison goes. There is zero personal gain for the physicians engaging in what they have been taught is a necessary and legitimate part of their job, however obviously and blatantly it conflicts with the actual job.
The paper said:
This leads to delays in care, medical mistrust, doubt in the reality of one’s bodily experiences, and medical trauma.
Click to expand...
Also harm. Mostly it's the harm. Without the harm, we'd just shrug it off and go elsewhere. Can't go elsewhere, it's a total regulated monopoly, and can't shrug off harm, which is mostly passive in the case of health care, and easily communicated by the simple fact of asking "what about you doing this to, I don't know, everyone with Parkinson's disease, treating it as a 'functional disorder', some sort of chronic shaking-with-anxiety syndrome?", yet flies completely over their heads anyway.
 
Plus of course it is also deceit,

And deliberate breach of/the opposite of informed consent which is supposed to the the main obligation of medicine (why it’s notable most of the ‘professions’ doing the delivery don’t sit under medicine and this oath) which is supposed to explicitly be investigating potential harms and honest about them.

All of this is about certain parts of medicine looking for excuses to and loopholes allowing them to not have to be bound by that tenet of honesty before imposing something onto someone’s body - conning them into something that harms them by lying that it will help them

And pretending their excuse around legal foreseeability which is the position here as those exact same treatment they know has a lot of evidence of reported harm is ‘but I believe’ as if that is ‘good intentions’ when it’s actually in today’s position of knowledge not just callous indifference but hiding and vicious silencing (by attacking the reputation of their victims) those harmed.

But yes why would moving the lamp and the clock hands ever be a respectful way of treating any individual, or not indeed be being done for any outcome other than to potentially drive them mad or make them doubt themselves and what actually is the true reality (rather than the fake, harmful reality being pushed in its place in order to remove choice from someone), whatever your claimed beliefs and ‘believing patients deserve this’ isn’t really a belief as they try and blag it but just a nasty little attitude that needs to be elucidated (and it’s all there thinly veiled in their manifestos) and then properly removed and tackled.
 
Last edited:
bobbler said:
And deliberate breach of/the opposite of informed consent which is supposed to the the main obligation of medicine (why it’s notable most of the ‘professions’ doing the delivery don’t sit under medicine and this oath) which is supposed to explicitly be investigating potential harms and honest about them.
Click to expand...
This issue is all hand-waved by the bullshit framing about this not being medical issues, not quite psychological either, where deceit is also not allowed, but some magical thing in-between all the other things. Of course, entirely for the express purpose of removing all those rules out of the way.

All of which conveniently leaves us bound by the rules of medicine but not protected by them. It really is an extra-legal system, like a secret police that can declare people to be non-citizens, thus waving all legal protections. And like all illegitimate authority abusing extra-legal powers, it's all for "the greater good"(TM).
 
Looking at the phenomenon through a Foucaultion lens is absolutely appropriate.
Gaslighting (as per the film) refers to the behaviour in a romantic relationship, so it follows that the behaviours in a different context need to be labelled (workplace gaslighting, medical gaslighting, familial gaslighting etc). It’s been in the cultural consciousness for a few years now and I think it’s a brilliant term to describe the tension between the medic and the patient- easily understood.
To go full Wittgenstein it may not need be that “harm” is an objective or driver of the medic’s behaviour.
By definition, denying a patients lived experience and reality must cause some kind of harm. It follows that by diverting medical assistance away may by itself result in harm due to lack of treatment. But to convince/deny or by other means gaslight a patient about their health/illness is to go a stage further and cause confusion, ongoing or future confusion or doubt and make the patient powerless in gaining help for their issue, as well as not treating them.
This certainly can cause the patient harm but may not be the motivation of the medic doing the gaslighting, which can in fact be caused by structural or institutional conditions which we often see like…Sir Simon NHS Board Wessley, BACME etc.
We could definitely go further and chuck in some reference to Gramsci and explore the hegemony.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom