If you are not taken seriously when you visit the doctor, if complaints are downplayed or simply blamed on the psyche, this is referred to as medical gaslighting. In a series, women tell stern their experiences with medical gaslighting – their illnesses differ, but they all share the feeling that they were not heard on the way to their diagnosis. Jasmin Breidenbach is one of them. She has endometriosis:

Since my first period, I had such severe cramps that I could no longer stand and blacked out. And when I went off the pill in my mid-20s, things got a lot worse.

Access to all STERN PLUS content and articles from the print magazine

ad-free

Already registered?