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National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week held September 10-16 for 2007, is an outreach to increase awareness that living with an invisible illness can be emotional challenge—as well as physical—and that more people than we would imagine are suffering silently.
Respondents answered the survey at http://www.invisibleillness.com and reported the following other annoying comments people tend to make:
* “Your illness is caused by stress.” (14.22%)
* “If you stopped thinking about it and went back to work…” (12.42%)
* “You can’t be in that much pain. Maybe you just want attention.” (10.95%)
* “Just pray harder.” (9.15%)
National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week’s web site has articles, resources and will feature twenty online seminars during Sept 10-14, 2007. Guests include Maureen Pratt, author of “Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain and Illness” and Jenni Prokopy, founder of ChronicBabe.com. Outreach materials include t-shirts, silicone awareness bracelets and rack cards, appropriate for support groups or the work place state what to say and not say to a chronically ill person.
The theme for 2007’s invisible illness week campaign is “Living with invisible illness is a roller coaster. Help a friend hold on!”
Technorati Tags: invisible illness week, media, migraines, chronic illness, health, somebody heal me
4 comments:
I was wondering if you joined in this event last year. I like their guests, but I am wondering why the owner's of the site - Rest Ministries - had to trademark the phrase "National Chronic Illness Week". Do you know if this is a recognized event beyond this site? Their chronic illness week webring just takes you to Christian sites that are generally not about illness. Any views?
Hi, donimo. This is my first year being involved with this event. Lisa Copen of Rest Ministries developed the project and so I think it is only natural that some of the information might have a Christian-oriented spin.
Hi! To answer your question, we are having the phrase trademarked so someone else can't come along and use the exact same phrase and start the same kind of week, but we want anyone and everyone to be involved in whatever level they choose. We didn't "have to trademark" the name, but about 5 years ago I had experience of someone maliciously copying my other web site being completely,a adding his name, and trying to use it to raise funds for his own personal use. After that I became very careful to do anything "business" by the book to protect myself as best as possible, and part of that is trademarking anything you want protected "just in case."
Our event has been listed in the Chase's Calendar of Events, "sthe most comprehensive and authoritative reference available on special events, holidays, federal and state observances, historic anniversaries and more" since NICIA Week began in 2002.
Regarding resources... a lot of sites in the web ring are not Christian, and most of the bloggers posting items about us, etc. are not Christian. If they are Christian web sites, to be approved, they MUST have something specific about their illness on their web page. If you go to http://www.invisibleillness.com you'll find a lot of the articles and other information has nothing to do with any religion ( See
http://www.mychronicillness.com/invisibleillness/articles.htm ) We use this week as a chance to recognize that many of the emotions that people with different illnesses deal with are the same, regardless of their illness. (And yes, part of those emotions can be spiritually-based.) But overall, after 10 years of having a chronic illness ministry, I found many people needing to know that others understood about the issues of having an invisible illness and that there was a need for us to create more awareness about this. And yes, part of our outreach is also to churches, to remind them that not everyone is healed and they need to wake up and remember the needs (and gifts!) of those with invisible chronic illness. If anyone would like to volunteer to let any religious affilated organizations know how they can better reach and encourage the chronically ill, they are more than welcome.
I have a 4-year-old son and 2 illnesses, rheumatoid arthritis and fibro, and I do a lot of II Week stuff in the middle of the night. But it's all the volunteers that help spread the word. My hope is that in time we'll be able to apply for some grant funds and have the week be on a larger scale, but I am doing what I can with the resources, time and energy that I have.
I hope this helps explain.
Thank you so much for your post, Lisa.
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