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Turned down an invitation to speak at a medical conference next spring. It’s the same lazy, recycled bullshit request. For context, I’m a psychologist who works with people living with chronic medical issues. My specialty is digestive diseases. I’ve been doing this since 2005 while in grad school. I was embedded in a medical department to do research on how much living with these diseases sucks, including having to deal with bullshit in the medical system. Most of my colleagues were physicians.

My peers and I fought for years to get mental health the recognition it needed, to try to break down the stigma and medical gaslighting, and create change. Part of doing this is educating physicians on these topics. How do you educate? Conferences. While mental health gained some ground, we remain relegated to the kids table at Thanksgiving dinner.

Now psych is included but not at the main sections where the people who need to hear the information are seated. Rather it seems to be a box to check so they can say “multidisciplinary.” But it’s all lip service. At least some people see it, but medical conferences are controlled and planned by a select “elite” few.

So, no. I’m not going to engage with this shit any more. In my email reply I gave this as my reason because I have nothing to lose by calling this out. 17 years was more than enough time to change things. They don’t want to.