Gaslighting manifests in many forms. The most common may be political fights involving the extreme positions on any controversial issue (e.g., gun control, abortion, immigration, you name it). One extreme faction claims they have the truth and blames the opposing extreme faction for the problems in our world. We see this every day in news reports. Those who have experienced gaslighting know that political fights involve gaslighting on steroids.
Another common form is when humans who are born one way (say, skin color, body type, or gender preference) judge others who are born differently. These misjudgments are based on misunderstanding and fear of others.
Gaslighting in health care and other businesses is unique. A false allegation can lead to a good and innocent clinician or worker being deemed incompetent to practice or work, even after decades of dedicated service to their profession. Here is how this happens. A disgruntled ex-spouse, patient, or colleague can submit an anonymous complaint to any professional licensing board. It can be an accurate allegation or a false allegation. The latter are usually based on confusion or revenge. By law, the clinician or employee has to report to a group of psychiatrists and/or other mental health professionals.
All experienced scientists and clinicians know about confirmation bias. Most laypersons who have been gaslit know about this phenomenon, too. The common vernacular is “garbage in, garbage out.” The mental health professionals are predisposed to find a misdiagnosis (commonly known as “labeling”) to explain why the client was referred to them in the first place. They of course have to get paid for their services, and they base their reimbursement on some kinds of diagnoses, whether these misdiagnoses are true or not.
Clinicians or employees who have no mental illnesses or dementia have to “play the part” to pass the judgment of psychiatrists and maintain their licenses to practice. When practicing geriatrics and hospice care for over 40 years, I oversaw the care of more psychiatric illnesses than any practicing psychiatrist. Yet, I got trapped in this dysfunctional system and lost my license. In other words, I was the scapegoat for corruption and collusion involving several agencies in Colorado. That’s OK.
In January 2026, our Colorado General Assembly and I are drafting simple legislation that prohibits gaslighting of innocent workers who require a license to pursue their chosen professions.
We will follow the lead of other professions. Consider teaching, for example. Teachers have unions that assure fair investigations of all allegations, be they accurate or false. Teams of lawyers are committed to these fair investigations. A false allegation is likely to be overturned. Another example would be alleged criminals. All criminals, whether rightly or wrongly accused, get legal defense from public defenders. Psychiatrists are not trained to investigate. They are trained to label and diagnose (often misdiagnose). They have so many options to choose from in what we critics call the “bible of psychiatry,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual – edition 5.
Our solution is simple. All professional licensing boards will conduct fair investigations. They certainly won’t rely on “back room dealings” between leaders of the professional boards and one group of psychiatrists who have never practiced ongoing primary care and may never have been a victim of false allegations.
We’re confident that once we clean up this mess in Colorado, other states will follow our lead.
Donald J. Murphy is a geriatrician.
