Diagnostic overshadowing

Sometimes a doctor or health professional thinks all of a person’s symptoms or problems are because of their disability, even when the same symptom would be a sign of a health issue in a person without disability. It’s called diagnostic overshadowing, and it comes out of the medical model of disability.

Diagnostic overshadowing can stop people with disability who have unrelated health problems from getting treatment for those problems, or leave us waiting longer than other people for medical treatment that works.