I am eight. I sit across from my mom in my pediatrician’s office on the paper-covered table. The paper is crinkled and uncomfortable. My mother’s head is cupped in her hands as the pediatrician leaves the room. After hearing about the intense, physical symptoms I had been experiencing for weeks, my pediatrician insisted that I had “mental health issues,” and she told my mom to get me professional help. A few silent tears rolled down my mom’s face; this is the first time I had ever seen her cry. I’m scared and confused and frustrated, but I continued to sit still and stare at the cold white floor. This is not the last time I will experience this situation.
It’s been nine years since I sat on that table, and the moment still haunts me. The pediatrician’s complete ignorance and dismissal of my physical illness continues to affect me in physical and mental ways all these years later. My chronic health issues throughout the years have landed me in some pretty extreme mental states, and I am an advocate for mental wellness; however, it is becoming too common to dismiss patients’ physical symptoms and use mental health as the solution for everything. It’s ironic that a healthcare professional could disregard my physical symptoms and tell me it’s mental health related without seeing how that would cause my mental health to deteriorate even further.
Months after my pediatrician said my health concerns were all in my head, my blood work revealed that I had both Lyme and Bartonella. I was treated with heavy antibiotics two times and supplements, and I began to feel better. When I was nine and returned for my yearly checkup, it just so happened that I had to see the same pediatrician who wrote off my symptoms. My mom tells her that I had positive test results for Lyme and Bartonella when I went to a doctor who specializes in diagnosing infectious diseases, and who took many blood samples and ran multiple tests, and that I began to heal as soon as I was treated properly.
The pediatrician looked over her glasses at my mom with a disgusted expression. She basically did everything besides directly mock my mom. She scoffed at the news, and asserted that it was surely the placebo effect and that I would have felt better after taking any medicine. (Prior to being diagnosed with Lyme and Bartonella, I was placed on other medications and supplements to see if they would make any improvements on my health—none did.) She was condescending and refused to believe in my physical symptoms. This experience, from a medical professional who claimed to care about mental health, could not have been more mentally disturbing for me and my mom.
It’s ironic (and scary) that in the scientific field of medicine, it seems as if some doctors are turning against the evidence. My blood work showed that I had tested positive for Lyme and Bartonella but my pediatrician denied that I ever had a physical illness. As a victim of being dismissed and gaslighted by my doctors, I began to struggle with depression, superstitious anxiety, and anxiety when going to doctors’ offices.
One of the best qualities about GenZ is our advocacy for mental health awareness and professional help. Erasing the stigma around mental health has been critical, especially after the global increase in depression and suicide rates for teens during and after COVID. It’s so important that there are accessible resources so those who are struggling are able to get the help they need. I’m glad that our generation is addressing the problem and advocating for those who struggle with mental health as opposed to the generations before us who tended to ignore and even mock the topic.
However, despite these benefits, there are certain dangers. The trend of diagnosing every patient—like me, when I was struggling with Lyme—with some sort of mental health disorder abuses the concept. This frequent misuse of the term actually waters down the significance and graveness of mental health disorders and it can lead to the neglect of patients’ actual issues. When I tried to voice my physical struggles to a doctor, and the doctor continued to dismiss it as a mental health problem when it was very clearly not, I began to feel as if my voice was not being heard.
It’s very hard for me to trust health care professionals now because it feels like I’m always questioning if they actually have my best interest in mind or if they are just lazily waiting for the next paycheck. It’s frustrating to know that my own mental struggles could have been avoided if my pediatrician, as well as other doctors I have had, stopped blaming mental issues for a patient’s physical ailments. In short, when a doctor writes off a physical illness as a mental one, they think they are protecting the patient’s mental health, when in reality, I know from experience, they might be causing it to decline.
Comments
This was troubling to read, especially because I've had my own experiences with dismissive and gaslighting doctors and mental health professionals (a notable one was the therapist who once told me it would help to fall in love). But in writing this, you are taking a stand and continuing to learn to self-advocate, which becomes an essential life skill the older you get, so I hope this helped you regain a level of personal agency. And you're right, about this doctor claiming your physical symptoms were mental health related, which led to your declining mental health: IRONY, there's no other word for it.
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