I’m a forensic psychiatrist and here’s what gaslighting REALLY means

A crime expert broke down what gaslighting is and shared a real life example he once witnessed during his career.

Dr. Sohom Das, 44, is a London-based forensic psychiatrist as well as a YouTube content creator. on his channel A psychologist for sore mindsDr. Das covers a variety of topics related to mental health and crime.

In a recent videobroke down the meaning of the term ‘gaslighting’, which has become widely used socially, not always correctly.

Speaking in the YouTube clip, which is titled CRIMINAL PSYCHIATRIST DISSECTS GASLIGHTING, Dr. Das describes gaslighting as a “form of emotional abuse.”

He explains, “It’s basically focused on making the target doubt themselves and their sanity. So it’s aimed at decreasing [the victim’s] self-confidence.

‘It confuses and disorients them [and] also… it pushes the power dynamic towards the abuser, so it’s easier for the abuser to continue to do this and also use other forms of abuse.

“Basically, it gets easier and easier to manipulate the target.”

He adds that the term gaslighting originated from a 1938 play of the same name, where a husband tries to convince his wife that she is slowly going insane so he can rob her.

He does so while gradually reducing the flame on the gas lamp, but when his wife says the light is dimming, he denies it.

To describe how gaslighting could occur in a real life setting, in the video Dr. Das discusses the case study of a patient he once evaluated.

The woman, referred to as ‘Miss C’, had a diagnosis of schizophrenia and was on trial facing grievous bodily harm.

He explains that Miss C had gone to a flat inhabited by drug dealers and cut one of them across the chest with a machete, causing a rather serious wound.

Miss C had lived in that flat with her boyfriend until a few weeks before.

‘According to Miss C, about a week before she moved in, the man [she attacked] he was really threatening her because he was worried she would tell the police about all the drug dealing that was going on on this floor,” Dr. Das explains.

“So he took her into a room, showed her his gun, and basically told her if you rat him out to the police, this gun will go to you and your family.”

According to the forensic psychiatrist, when he assessed Miss C, she said that she had moved into the apartment – which was full of drug dealers – with a boyfriend.

Over time, her boyfriend, who used drugs, began dealing drugs and working for the men who lived in the apartment.

Dr. Das says: ‘BBasically, they wanted him out of the house because they didn’t like him and because they didn’t want him to know about the activities.

And so, they began to criticize Miss C.

They would have long, convoluted conversations with her about how her boyfriend was cheating on her, showing her photos of him with other women and text messages they said he had sent them.

Later that day, they would delete the messages and photos and insist that the conversations hadn’t even taken place.

According to Dr. Das: ‘TThey knew that she struggled with mental illness and that she had drifted in and out of psychosis at times…so they were using that to their advantage to disorient and confuse her, and leave her wondering what reality really was. ‘

In addition, they gave him drugs for free and then demanded money, saying that they never told him that he could have them for free.

“So this was a very confusing, difficult and complicated case from a diagnostic point of view, because there were symptoms of mental illness in addition to drug use,” says Dr. Das.

“But when I evaluated her, she was clean and her mental health was much better. So the advice I gave the court was that she did not need to be transferred to a psychiatric unit.

‘However, I explained the context of what happened. And the judge, I think, gave her a more lenient sentence and she would have received it differently.’

Dr. Sohom Das is in Twitter, instagramand Tik Tokas well as YouTube.