![]() There are those whose cancer reached an advanced stage before they could get a doctor to take them seriously. However, that excuse doesn’t hold water – there is a large overlap in heart attack symptoms between the sexes.Įlsewhere, social media and news reports are full of egregious examples of women being medically gaslit. This missed diagnosis is often explained by the fact that women’s heart attack symptoms are “strange and unpredictable” (compared with a man’s “normal” symptoms). ![]() One of the best-known examples relates to heart disease, where a woman’s symptoms are twice as likely as a man’s to be simply written off as mental illness. ![]() In many ways, the term gaslighting is an apt fit for medical settings, especially when it comes to the common refrain: “It’s all in your head.” Those who are socially, culturally, politically or economically marginalised don’t find that this experience suddenly changes when they walk through the clinic door. It is a painful reminder that medicine does not occupy a rarefied space apart from society and history. More often than not, gaslit patients are women, members of the LGBTQ community, people of colour and older adults. There is usually a clear power imbalance at play. Medical gaslighting refers to cases in which a healthcare practitioner imposes a pattern of questions, testing or diagnosis that runs counter or tangential to the history or symptoms the patient is describing or experiencing. The term also used in discussions about health. Politicians are accused of it, as are celebrities. Today, the term “gaslighting” is widely used to describe psychological manipulation, where a person is made to doubt their perception of reality. What her senses tell her is a lie – a sign of her steady descent into madness. He attempts to convince her that the gas lighting in their house, which the audience can see is flickering, is not really flickering. Gregory is intent on making Paula think she is going insane so that he can have her committed to a mental institution and claim her inheritance. Set in 1880s London, the story plays out in the upper-middle-class, gas-lit home of Gregory and Paula Anton. However, the ruse employed by its villain gave the work remarkable staying power. Gaslight, a psychological thriller starring Ingrid Bergman, was a box-office hit when it was released in 1944, but its time in the limelight could have ended there.
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