Psychologists are developing strategies for both patients and providers to reduce stigma related to these illnesses and to better support people who experience medical gaslighting.
Unfortunately, psychologists and physicians are developing strategies to perpetuate or increase it, under the pretense of working to reduce it, in larger number, and with far more effectiveness, due to its inexplicable, and frankly very ugly, popularity. So the net effect is still in the wrong direction.
Not that they do anything different from the last half-century, in fact it's just keeping the same pace but with the increasing popularity of healing mind magic, both with the public and the health care industry, it's basically like scooping out the ocean with a bucket to reduce rising sea level.
Until this popularity is addressed head on, and the truly ugly nature of this evil system, is addressed, with consequences for those who persist, nothing will change as long as humans are the whole system. None of this is accidental. It has a long tradition and history, the reasons are not even subtle or hidden, and it's also never going to be fixed as long as psychosomatic ideology is not massively reined in, basically reduced at least 99% as a starting point, because the whole thing is just a bunch of barbarian horseshit. Being overworked excuses nothing here. Not even close.
AI will change that, because gaslighting is mostly a reactionary strategy to deal with a huge mismatch between supply and demand, there is simply too much demand for health care, and not enough clinicians to do the work.
"When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"
In fact, conditions that are not easily designated for a particular illness accounted for the largest share of medical services spending in the United States in 2021
Turns out there are about 5,000 sub-species of zebras and together they add up to more than there are horses. Or whatever, not quite but double whatever. Funny how that works.
Also the idea of having therapists working to address medical "PTSD" (the term clearly doesn't apply here, come on) while the problem is not actually being addressed upstream, medical gaslighting is more common and popular than ever, is in the same category as selling weapons to both sides in a war. Not helping. Not even close to the right thing to do.
It's also something that the article focuses so heavily on the resulting shame and self-doubt, when from what I have seen over the years is that it's not common, because the vast majority of patients see right through the gaslighting. But they can make therapies for the shame and self-doubt, so as is tradition, they focus only on themselves.
“People who have a negative interaction with one provider often stop trusting other providers who did not gaslight them, and this can morph into a pervasive lack of trust,” said Jackson. “Providers can stop this cycle by partnering with patients to seek healing when conditions do not fit inside the traditional categories for diagnosis and treatment.”
Again: not helping. Not helping at all. Medicine is a heavily regulated system and extremely standardized, to provide a baseline of quality where most physicians are as capable as the next, but with this approach comes the inevitable fact that the flaws are copy-pasted almost universally. It's normal to stop trusting all physicians after even a single encounter with medical gaslighting because it's a system, and the problem with systemic flaws is that they are everywhere, and most people are smart enough at human dynamics to see through this.
