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D:
What's the biggest mistake you see people make in living with psoriasis?
That's
a good question and the only reason I feel like I can answer it is because I
spent five years as the leader for the Austin Psoriasis Support Group so I got
to meet a lot of people and I got to interact on a national basis with support
group leaders around the country.
I
would say that prior to the internet, so it's different now but the first thing
that occurred to me and I think this is still true for a lot of people with
psoriasis is that because we wear this disease on the outside, there are so
many people that isolate themselves. I never had a single conversation with
anybody that had psoriasis until I was a support group leader.
They've
done studies and shown that people with psoriasis would prefer to have cancer.
The only disease that people would rather not have is clinical depression.
People would rather have congestive heart failure. They would rather have
cancer than psoriasis.
And
that was one of the questions I saw written in your write up was what is
debilitating about psoriasis. What's debilitating and what becomes its own
biggest mistake is the way it forces people inside. That struggle then
complicates their ability to reach outside and to get more information on how
to help .
That's
why I mean it very genuinely when I say thank you for your work because...sorry.
Ten percent of people with psoriasis at any point in time are suicidal. I
didn't know that until I was a support group leader. The mistake is not
reaching out and the way it can force people to isolate .
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