Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

It's in today (Oct 11th) online NYTimes paper, but looks like it ran on July 29th. I'd put the link in, but unless you have a subscription you'll probably hit a firewall. At any event, these are the "red flags" that show you are being gaslighted. I read them and thought, omg, I bet everyone with RLS hears these from a doctor sooner or later. The title of the article is Feeling Dismissed? How to Spot ‘Medical Gaslighting’ and What to Do About It.

Your provider continually interrupts you, doesn’t allow you to elaborate and doesn’t appear to be an engaged listener.

Your provider minimizes or downplays your symptoms, for example questioning whether you have pain.

Your provider refuses to discuss your symptoms.

Your provider will not order key imaging or lab work to rule out or confirm a diagnosis.

You feel that your provider is being rude, condescending or belittling.

Your symptoms are blamed on mental illness, but you are not provided with a mental health referral or screened for such illness.

Thank you this is very interesting. Fortunately in all my dealings with medical professionals this has only happened once, many years ago. Some have been much better than others but did try.
The Consultant who was not so good, thought he was good, when I said I was there regarding my rls he replied that he would decide if I had rls. His parting shot was that I had rls and should continue on the current medication. £400 consultation fee down the drain.

I read that article when it came out. I had to look up what gaslighting was! Here it is for anyone else who wasn't sure:

"Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which a person or group causes someone to question their own sanity, memories, or perception of reality. People who experience gaslighting may feel confused, anxious, or as though they cannot trust themselves.....

medical gaslighting is when a medical professional dismisses a person’s health concerns as being the product of their imagination. "

from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... -it-occurs

Gas Light was originally a British stage play. There have been several movies including, the one I remember, Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight (1944). (No, I am not that old but used to watch old films.)
It would be worth trying to find one on line, it is an excellent story.

From Britannica:

Gaslighting, an elaborate and insidious technique of deception and psychological manipulation, usually practiced by a single deceiver, or “gaslighter,” on a single victim over an extended period. Its effect is to gradually undermine the victim’s confidence in his own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from appearance, thereby rendering him pathologically dependent on the gaslighter in his thinking or feelings.

In the play and films, for example, a deceitful husband drives his wife to near insanity by convincing her that she is a kleptomaniac and that she has only imagined the sounds in the attic and the dimming of the gaslights in their house, which were actually the result of his searching for her aunt’s missing jewels.

That was a very good movie.