Patient experience and diagnostic odyssey

Diagnosis itself can be traumatic — the 2025 phenomenological record

establishedfindingstrata converge

The 2025 BMJ phenomenological study (n=9, in-depth interviews) describes an "endless struggle" marked by uncertainty, dismissal, and medical gaslighting — and urges trauma-informed care at the diagnostic encounter itself. The psychiatric-label misdiagnosis burden is documented alongside it.

Subtype scopehEDS, HSD
Date2025
Criteria erainternational-2017
Reviewed2026-09-16

Evidence

registryregistry analysis

Anxiety and depression were the most-common pre-EDS alternative diagnoses in the registry survey.