“It’s not all in my head. The pain I feel is real”: How Moral Judgment Marginalizes Women with Fibromyalgia in Canadian Health Care
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain condition that affects 440,000 Canadians, most of whom are women. Many physicians, although not all, are sceptical of FM’s legitimacy and discredit women with FM. This moral judgment takes the following forms: disbelief of women’s pain reports, blaming women with FM for adding to their pain by catastrophizing, dismissing new symptoms by assuming that they are related to FM, accusing women of not wanting to get better, and seeing them as a frustrating waste of time. Moral judgment marginalizes these women, impeding their healthcare needs from being met. In this article, I illustrate this kind of moral judgment by drawing on my own and other women’s experiences of FM, as well as physicians’ attitudes and advice to other physicians about FM. I profile three practices that could mitigate moral judgment of women with FM: listening, validation, and empathy.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Margaret Oldfield
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2295561075