8 Symptoms Doctors Often Dismiss As Anxiety
When Vanessa Walilko was in her late 20s, she got strep throat—and then she got it again and again. Because she’s allergic to strep bacteria, she says her illness turned into scarlet fever several times within a few months. Soon, she started having heart issues. After spending a day in the sun selling jewelry at an art fair, she nearly passed out. A friend rushed her to the emergency room, where a doctor asked if she had a family history of people dropping dead in their 20s. When Walilko said no, the doctor told her to learn to better manage her stress and sent her home.
“I don’t know if I can convey how smug and flippant he was,” recalls Walilko, 41, who lives in Evanston, Ill. “It was unreal—I was so glad my friend was there with me, because I was pretty delirious. I had to check with her: ‘Did I catch all that?’”
Walilko knew something was wrong—yet says clinicians continued to brush off her symptoms. After doing internet research, she figured out that her boyfriend was likely a strep carrier, which meant he was harboring strep bacteria in his throat while remaining asymptomatic. Seven different doctors dismissed her theory, she says, before one finally agreed to test Walilko’s boyfriend—who was positive for strep.
Read More: What to Do If Your Doctor Doesn’t Take Your Symptoms Seriously
That unlocked the key to her physical recovery, though the emotional scars lingered. “We should be able to put our faith in doctors,” she says. “If something is cut-and-dried, like a broken bone, a heart attack, or cancer, doctors are like, ‘Great. We have a plan.’ But if it’s something that requires nuance and thinking outside their training, they kind of freak out and dismiss it.”
Walilko’s experience isn’t unique: Researchers, clinicians, and patients alike have found that doctors routinely dismiss real medical symptoms that have nothing to do with mental health as anxiety. Across the internet, people have shared viral stories about medical gaslighting, describing the ways that doctors chalked up their symptoms of appendicitis, heart conditions, or even cancer to anxiety.
