What If the Media Covered Chronic Illness as Much as Mental Illness?

How many posts by a media outlet about mental illness did you scroll past on Facebook today? I scrolled past about five in the past hour. This is not a bad thing, but we do have a large hole in the coverage of health issues. This hole is chronic illnesses. How many posts by a media outlet about chronic illness did you scroll past today? Besides The Mighty I scrolled past none. The Mighty is an amazing outlet, but it is specifically focused on illnesses.

Most people have no idea what a chronic illness is. And this is a huge problem. I can bet that if the media covered chronic illnesses, and not just vague claims by celebrities, then awareness would spread, and the stigma around chronic illness would get much better too.

I think we should take action. Contact your media outlet and let them know if you can maybe offer to write an article about it for them. Or if you don’t write, maybe share a post about it on social media with the tag #CoverChronicIllness so we can all help to spread awareness. To make the future generations of chronically ill people have a better life.

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Thinkstock photo via ipopba.