Results from survey of psoriasis patients don't look good.

[Sandra]

I don't know if the survey is biased or not, I do know that the psoriasis affected my mood. Years of battling it resulted in fatigue, my self esteem was rock bottom due to my appearance. I have never been diagnosed with depression but have had real low moments/weeks.
Since starting the new medication, it is amazing the difference it has made to my life. I have bags of energy, I am happy, nothing is getting me down.
I did face discrimination in the work place, to the point I had to request a staff meeting to explain my condition and the effect that looks, commments, moving away from had. I have been stopped on a beach in Cornwall because I had uncovered my arms and asked should I be there with children around! I have been asked if I have been in a fire and worse whilst waiting in a hospital waiting room people chose to stand rather than sit in a seat next to me!
So for me the survey is representative of my experience with psoriasis.
I believe more education is needed and not just the public, my experience is that doctors have no concept of how psoriasis affects those on a daily basis and my experience is, they see it as just a 'skin' issue. Only when I got to a consultant did that attitude change.
Sandra

[jiml]

I don't know if the survey is biased or not, I do know that the psoriasis affected my mood. Years of battling it resulted in fatigue, my self esteem was rock bottom due to my appearance. I have never been diagnosed with depression but have had real low moments/weeks.
Since starting the new medication, it is amazing the difference it has made to my life. I have bags of energy, I am happy, nothing is getting me down.
I did face discrimination in the work place, to the point I had to request a staff meeting to explain my condition and the effect that looks, commments, moving away from had. I have been stopped on a beach in Cornwall because I had uncovered my arms and asked should I be there with children around! I have been asked if I have been in a fire and worse whilst waiting in a hospital waiting room people chose to stand rather than sit in a seat next to me!
So for me the survey is representative of my experience with psoriasis.
I believe more education is needed and not just the public, my experience is that doctors have no concept of how psoriasis affects those on a daily basis and my experience is, they see it as just a 'skin' issue. Only when I got to a consultant did that attitude change.
Sandra

[Caroline]

Very good pinpoint of what people with psoriasis have to go through Sandra !!

[pingu]

Great point Sandra

When we discuss depression and psoriasis are we looking at those who are described as "clinically depressed". I absolutely do not want to belittle or detract from people who suffer from depression no matter what its cause. However, we all fell a little down from time to time when we have a bad spell with our psoriasis and simply because we do not seek medical support and or anti depressants does not mean we are not depressed as a direct result of psoriasis. Being a little down is still depressed but then we might gather ourselves up and take the world on anyway. Some people can’t or are much more deeply affected and will be "clinically depressed"

It does affect our lifestyles and choices and I would have had a completely different life without psoriasis, better or worse I have no idea but definitely different as I would have had different choices and not made decisions based on how good or bad my skin was.

[jiml]

Yes it seems to have affected a lot of us in similar ways and I'm Glad I'm not the only one that thinks their lives may have been different if they weren't plagued with psoriasis.
Many life choices are taken and in every one psoriasis influenced the route I took

But I'm happy as I am and wouldn't want to change the life I have now, but would have loved to have been offered effective treatment earlier in my life

[D Foster]

Yes I am sure that there is a large element of truth in the survey however if you replaced psoriasis with many other conditions then the conclusions would probably result in the same statements.
We know that psoriasis is a disease , though should we call it a disease as such ? , that causes distress due to the fact that it can be seen and misinterpreted by ignorant people which does cause depression though again there are many levels of depression .
I agree that education is needed but extremely difficult to achieve in any depth, what is great about this site is that support is the key to offsetting the negative aspects of other people but not only that the support is by people who have the same problems which puts a completely different spin on it.
I also think that in this day and age depression and associated problems seem to becoming more common or maybe with the increase in communication it is just easier to tell everybody what sort of problems you have.

[Fred]

I don't know if the survey is biased or not,

Just to be clear. I wasn't suggesting the survey was "Biased" as the results don't benefit the company.

I was suggesting that the survey was done as a publicity stunt which would have benefited them. I'm against those that make our treatments running surveys like this or running social media websites.

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You are right Sandra, not many GPs understand how psoriasis can effect ones self esteem and tend to ignore it. To them it's just a skin problem and a bit of cream will solve the problem. But as we all know, the cream does not work and some may not go back to their GP for further investigation.

I would like to see a fast track to a dermatology clinic when a person first goes to their GP with suspected psoriasis. I don't mean a top doctor as such, but someone in the dermatology department that is trained and understands how psoriasis can effect people. That person could then evaluate us and decide on the best way forward.

We all need our GP's and they do a good job, but a lot of them just don't understand the impact it has on a persons life. The sooner we get to talk to someone in dermatology the better, if not we end up for years just putting up with repeat creams from our GP and the problem gets worse.

[AmandaL]

I'm not sure if this is a general thing, but whenever I visit my Dermatologist, I have to fill in a survey commenting on how much my Psoriasis had affected different situations over the past week. I can't think of a time where the answers were looked at while I was at the appointment which defeats the purpose to me.

[Fred]

I'm not sure if this is a general thing, but whenever I visit my Dermatologist, I have to fill in a survey commenting on how much my Psoriasis had affected different situations over the past week.  I can't think of a time where the answers were looked at while I was at the appointment which defeats the purpose to me.

That'll be the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI)

[AmandaL]

I'm not sure if this is a general thing, but whenever I visit my Dermatologist, I have to fill in a survey commenting on how much my Psoriasis had affected different situations over the past week.  I can't think of a time where the answers were looked at while I was at the appointment which defeats the purpose to me.

That'll be the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI)

Yeah that's the one!