I came across this term whilst listening to the BBC 3 podcast ‘Free Thinking’ . This episode introduced me to the work of Havi Carel and the philosophy of illness which I blogged about recently.
Epistemic injustice occurs when one person’s account or claims to knowledge is ignored or de-legitimised in favour of accounts from more powerful groups. A common experience for female patients complaining of pain which doctors, usually but not always men, cannot explain and the women are often told their troubles are in the mind. Or in my case, my condition was described to me as ‘multi-factorial’ which I took to mean the same thing.
Last year, I was talking to a palliative care consultant and he asked me if I was anxious and I replied that I was more depressed than anxious. He corrected me by saying I was not depressed because I had told him that I was working on a PhD and he explained that I would not have the motivation to do this if I was clinically depressed, as it was an illness that drains the sufferer of all motivation. So I was coming to terms with my transition into chronic illness which was making me sad.
Does it matter if we carelessly describe ourselves as being depressed; or point to tidy drawers and laugh at our supposed OCD; or describe an attack of anxiety as PTSD? Carel claims our habit of exaggeration trivializes these serious illnesses and makes it harder for sufferers to get the treatment they need and therefore they suffer an injustice.
Walking whilst ill 