Celebrate World Psoriasis Day by starting a Self help group

World Psoriasis day is celebrated every year on 29th October.This day is dedicated to all people having psoriasis and/or psoriasis arthritis.Various aims of World Psoriasis day are:

1. To raise awareness among the people having this skin condition.To let them know that they are not alone and to let them know the best available information about this problem.

2. To aware the non sufferers about the non contagious nature of this disease and to end the stigma and discrimination towards people with psoriasis.

3. To encourage more in-depth research on this disease to improve the effectiveness of various treatments available.

I developed Psoriasis about 9 years ago and in all these years, I have understood that only a person with psoriasis can understand the feelings of other person with same skin condition.As we have discussed in my earlier post about managing emotions and its importance in healing psoriasis, I think the concept of SELF HELP GROUP is very relevant for all of us,people with psoriasis.

In a self help group, people share a common problem and they give all kinds of support to each other in their journeys of dealing with that common problem.Imagine one Sunday afternoon, you meet a bunch of people of different age group

• with similar white and red flakes as you do have on your skin
• with similar journey of ups and down in dealing with psoriasis as you are going through

You come to know what they all are doing to heal their psoriasis, you enjoy various fun and recreation activities with them.

You can exchange your contact information with them and in this way, very easily you have so many friends with whom you can talk and share your emotions whenever you want.

Isn’t it amazing?

Going further, your Self help group(SHG) can plan for an outgoing some times where you will have lots of fun forgetting your psoriasis for some time 🙂

Although it is best to have a physical SHG meet once in a weekly or fortnightly, but in case it is not possible, you can have an online SHG meet using Google hangout or Skype and physical meets can be organized on monthly or bi monthly basis.

If you know someone in your locality having psoriasis, then you are lucky otherwise go search some one having psoriasis online.You can do it easily by checking the members of various psoriasis related Facebook groups, yahoo support groups etc.

Take initiatives;contact them and plan to meet them in person.Develop a comfortable environment in your meetings where everyone can share his/her feelings and experiencing in a relaxed way.Before winding up the meetings, take everyone’s feedback and take suitable actions in next meetings.I think it will be an amazing experience altogether.

In short, we all should try to build our local Self help groups and this will be surely a very good way to heal our emotional wounds which will benefit us to heal psoriasis in a long run.It will be the best way to celebrate World Psoriasis Day.

Wishing you a happy and cheerful life with or without Psoriasis.