Parkinson’s affects all areas of peoples’ lives and everyone has a unique experience of the condition. The coronavirus crisis, and instruction to stay at home has intensified this experience for a lot of people.
World Parkinson’s Day is more than raising awareness, changing perceptions and shifting attitudes. It’s about getting to know the people affected.
That’s why the Parkinson’s community have shared their stories to help the UK public understand Parkinson’s.
The forum, as always, is a place for anyone affected by Parkinson’s to share their experiences with the condition and to offer peer support to each other. We encourage you to use this thread to continue sharing your experiences.
Is today World Parkinson’s Day? … If not, then when is it?
I fully understand and accept that, very rightfully, there is huge panic about the current situation but as a Parkinson sufferer I have no idea when it’s WPD.
As I’ve stated, understandable this year but WPD is never given any time by the major media and that, in my honest opinion is why ‘we’ are seldom seen as ‘disabled’.
Given the current circumstances, we wanted to keep the focus on providing necessary information on the Coronavirus and how it affects people with Parkinson’s on the forum, however, we have been actively promoting World Parkinson’s Day on our social media channels and our website since last week Thursday.
To your point, we know that people don’t understand Parkinson’s. And our community tells us that a lack of public understanding makes living with the condition harder. That’s why we’re committed to building understanding of Parkinson’s. Challenging myths about who gets it. Educating people about its 40-plus symptoms and their distressing impacts. Revealing the hidden side effects of medication.
This year, the community developed our World Parkinson’s Day campaign. We asked representatives from the community what they wanted to see so we could help make it happen. They told us that even when people are aware of Parkinson’s, they often don’t understand it. And they want to change this by sharing their personal experiences of the condition on an online map, challenging the public to see if they really ‘Know Parkinson’s’.
https://www.parkinsons.org.uk/get-involved/world-parkinsons-day-2020
