What is an invisible illness?

What is an invisible illness?

An invisible illness is an illness or disability that cannot be immediately seen.

These can be physical or mental illnesses, stroke disabilities.

A disability is defined for our purposes here today as an ongoing physical or mental challenge.

And it's important to remember that disability does not equal being disabled.

Many of the conditions that I'm going to go on to talk about are ongoing and people function with these conditions, illnesses or disabilities.

They continue to raise families, enjoy hobbies and sports, and have a fulfilling career.

However, there are some conditions, disabilities or illnesses that do limit us.

So common examples of physiological illnesses are lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease, celiac disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and hearing or visual impairments.

So unseen mental health illnesses can be anxiety, depression, bipolar, PTSD and schizophrenia.

And also we must include cognitive and neurological conditions such as autism, ADAD, ADHD, epilepsy and dementia.

Examples sometimes I'm going to name a few examples of where these hidden disabilities are affecting you people.

So a Crohn sufferer visiting the bathroom regularly, or a diabetic slurring their words whilst they're in the middle of a hypoglycemic episode.

A student with a traumatic brain injury struggling with memory whilst everything else appears normal.

So if we look at individuals that have severe anxiety, they're restricted to their homes, unable to do the shopping or maintain social engagements, which are such an important part of maintaining connection and beneficial for good mental health.

The UK government estimated that 70 to 80% of disabilities are invisible when they carried out their 2023 research.

So I'm going to signpost you to a great organisation called the Invisible Disabilities Association.

They are all about raising awareness in society and society struggles to accept, be aware of those with invisible illnesses.

So to help raise awareness, there is a simple tool called the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower, which is a symbol you can wear showing others that you're living with a hidden disability, especially when out and about, and you can get these symbols on lanyards which have sunflowers on them, and but more information can be found out about these things on two websites.

So the first one is www.invisibledisabilities.org or www.hdsunflower.com forward slash UK.

So do look to see if you can get some assistance or get a tool that will help you help others on these websites.

Please take care and thank you for listening.