The Medical Gaslighting of Women: It’s NOT just in your head!

With guest Leah Noonan

Medical gaslighting is when a healthcare provider dismisses your complaints or concerns. They don't take you seriously or blame your symptoms on a vague cause (such as stress) and often send you home without a proper diagnosis or treatment plan. This is what happened to today’s guest for decades.

We live in a world where  much of the data we have is based on the male experience. As Feminist author Simone de Beauvoir said, “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.” The data our society collects, and the perspectives prioritized typically favor men’s experience, not women’s. That data then gets used to allocate research funding and resources and to make decisions about healthcare and how things are designed – including medical standards of care and pain medication.

This episode is about how a world designed around male data can be life-threating.

Like having a heart attack go undiagnosed, because studies show women are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack and more likely overall to have their symptoms dismissed by medical providers. How research shows that compared with men, women face longer waits to be diagnosed with cancer and heart disease, are treated less aggressively for traumatic brain injury, and are less likely to be offered pain medications.

While this continues, women will unnecessarily suffer!

Don’t miss this episode where guest Leah Noonan bravely and candidly shares her gut-wrenching story of decades of medical gaslighting and how she took her health into her own hands and finally got the medical treatment she needed.

Reference:

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for men by Caroline Criado Perez (book)

https://www.northwell.edu/katz-institute-for-womens-health/articles/gaslighting-in-womens-health

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/well/live/gaslighting-doctors-patients-health.html

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