Unheard Voices
In a world where remaining unheard reshapes the realities of women with GI symptoms, this video discloses their overlapping experiences, revealing the quiet violence of medical gaslighting.
Medical gaslighting is a systemic issue that disproportionately affects women with gastrointestinal symptoms due to gender bias in medicine, underrepresentation in research, and the often invisible nature of such symptoms. Many interventions overlook patient realities and place the burden on patients to advocate for themselves, rather than addressing systemic factors. My capstone project seeks to shift attention towards these systemic causes by centering the voices of women who have experienced medical invalidation, including myself, and highlighting common patterns.
Artist
Daranie Pin (2026)
Artist Lens
I chose animation as my medium because of its potential to evoke emotional responses that may be difficult to do through traditional forms of media. Medical gaslighting often involves emotions that cannot be seen in medical records or statistics. Hence, creating an animation enables me to visualize women’s internal experiences through movement, metaphor, and abstraction. The project combines patient narratives, hand-crafted visual sequences at 12 frames per second, and music—to illustrate the consequences women with GI symptoms often face within healthcare settings.
My design process was informed by interviews with women living with GI-related conditions, in which they reflected on their diagnostic journeys, moments of invalidation and how it’s impacted them, coping strategies, and hopes for change within healthcare. Rather than depicting these stories literally, I translated recurring themes into visual metaphors that audience members might be able to better understand and relate to. By blending realistic imagery with more symbolic and abstract elements, this creates space for viewers to engage emotionally with these frequently overlooked experiences.
The intended audience for this work includes healthcare professionals, educators, administrators, and students. By sharing patient narratives, this project aims to bridge the gap between patient experience and clinical practice by urging healthcare institutions to both recognize and address the systemic barriers that contribute to the dismissal of women's symptoms.
Media
Video