Welcome to the new Tourettes Action blog

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Welcome to the new Tourettes Action blog. It is a really exciting venture for us and one which we hope will be a useful source of information and sharing.

We designed the blog to give people with Tourette Syndrome (TS) a space to talk about their TS and how it affects them, things that help as well as things that don’t. We hope it will also help to fight stigma as people can see what life is really like if you have or you live with someone who has TS.

Recently I spoke at an event which looked at stigma and I suggested to the meeting that TS was indeed the last stigma; one where people felt justified to be objectionable and felt no need to try and understand the person they were ridiculing or, on some dreadful occasions, abusing.

I still talk to people who have never met anyone with TS and so we hope this blog will start to build a better sense of community and to provide a space where everyone can share. And lastly, we want to build a portfolio of case studies and real events which we can talk to the media about to get across the real story of TS.

So what do we hope you will blog about?

• Experiences of getting a diagnosis
• What it is like having tics in school
• What life is like in a family where more than one person has TS
• Positive or negative experiences
• Research projects
• Discussion on medical issues, e.g. new treatments
• What is it like having a child with TS

And generally anything else that you think is interesting and that people would like to read or know.

Who will be blogging?

We have already started asking people to blog to get the ball rolling and we have tried to ask a cross section of people to join in. There will be blogs from TA staff and Trustees, researchers talking about why they are studying TS and what they think. We would like to see some of the TS specialists joining in, to talk about their area of specialism, what interests them and anything new on the horizon.

But the heart of the blog will be for and about your life with TS.

Written by you, your parents, family members or friends; teachers who have students with TS; employers of people with TS; and, members of the wider community who come across people with TS such as police officers.

How to get involved

I do hope you will visit the blog and contribute to it, because only if the whole community in all its guises joins together, can we begin to make a change and hopefully improve the lives of all who live with TS.

If you are interested in contributing to the blog, please email us to find out how you can get involved.

As a young man with TS said at the weekend; TS is like an annoying friend who won’t leave you alone.

I look forward to reading and sharing this space with you.

Best wishes

Suzanne Dobson

Chief Executive, Tourettes Action

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