Join our campaign this MS Awareness Week!

Here at MS-UK, we are really excited to share with you that for the first time ever, we have been working on a joint MS Awareness Week campaign with multiple sclerosis (MS) charities, Shift.MS, MS Trust, MS Society, Overcoming MS, MS Together and the Multiple Sclerosis National Therapy Centers.

The theme for this year’s MS Awareness Week, taking place 24-30 April, is mental health. A diagnosis of MS can have a huge impact on someone’s mental health and emotional wellbeing. MS can present in many different ways and can raise all sorts of thoughts and feelings around a person’s future and how MS will play a part in it.

Use the #MSMakesMe hashtag

So we decided to create a social media campaign called #MSMakesMe and we are inviting all of the MS community to share the #MSMakesMe hashtag with a description of how MS makes you feel on social media all throughout MS Awareness Week. This could be #MSMakesMe sad, #MSMakesMe laugh, or #MSMakesMe brave, for example.

We would like you to share a different word each day with a picture of yourself to show just how differently MS affects everyone. And it doesn’t stop at you – why not invite your partner, friends and family members to do the same, highlighting how MS doesn’t just affect you, but everyone around you, too? By getting involved in this campaign you can help us raise awareness of and understanding around the condition.

We hope that this social media content throughout the week will also start a conversation with your own networks, encouraging you to speak out and share what it’s really like to live with MS.

We are also hoping to work with a special celebrity MSer who has kindly given up some of her time to help promote the campaign UK-wide for us during MS Awareness Week, so watch this space for the big reveal because everyone is getting involved!

How you can help!

We are collecting a variety of #MSMakesMe stories that we would like to share throughout MS Awareness Week on our blog and social media channels to raise even more awareness of MS. So, if you would like to write a short 300-500 word piece about how MS makes you feel, we would love to hear from you. Please email your story and a picture or two of yourself to communications@ms-uk.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

Start taking steps to improve your mental health and wellbeing

MS-UK is making all its online activities available for you to try for free this MS Awareness Week. Whether you want to join a peer pod to speak with other like-minded people living with MS, join an information session or take part in one of our accessible exercises classes, simply visit My Portal, register to view the events and sign up to attend. Below are the events taking place during MS Awareness Week.

Monday 24 April

1:30pm – Better Balance information workshop