Why Gaslighting Matters in the Healthcare Sector & How to Deal with It Effectively
From awareness to action: Confronting gaslighting in medicine, empowering patients, and empathizing with providers
Subscribe to Health and Wellness by Dr Mehmet Yildiz
I first encountered the term gaslighting in theaters in the 1960s, but it was coined before I was born. It was popularized from a play and 1944 film adaptation of Gas Light, in which a husband manipulated his wife into believing she was losing her sanity by dimming the gas lights in their home and denying that the lights flickered when she noticed them.
During my postgraduate studies, I gained valuable insights into the cognitive processes, social dynamics, and psychological mechanisms underlying gaslighting. These insights helped me understand this harmful behavior and informed me on how to prevent and address it effectively.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person intentionally or unintentionally attempts to make another person question their perception, memory, or reality. These subtle behaviors can involve denying the truth, minimizing the other person’s feelings or experiences, or deliberately misleading them to doubt…
