Hi everyone,
So we come to the end of Tinnitus Week already. BTA's petition for more research funding was certainly at the core of things this week, and a worthwhile cause if you ask me. The counter is at 13,000+ signatures. To be honest, I don't know what will happen with the petition now, but I will try to get some info from BTA and keep you updated. Any further discussions on that topic should move to
this thread.
On behalf of Tinnitus Hub, I also want to say that we agree some of the awareness messages sent out by other organisations were counter-productive. There is nothing wrong in principle with publishing success story videos or pointing out that most people habituate. Those kinds of messages can be useful in a certain context, particularly when it comes to support for new sufferers who are anxious. BUT... at a time when we are trying to convince policymakers that more research and effective treatments are sorely needed, what we really need is to drive home the suffering of those who can't habituate. Which is what we tried to do with
our video. In that sense, I am happy to see BTA apparently moving in this direction, and I think their political lobbying work is the way forward for all organisations who represent tinnitus sufferers.
Personally, and to end on a positive note, we are quite proud of what we managed to pull off during this week. See post #1 of this thread; we managed to do most of those things! We want to particularly thank
@MrCrybaby and
@Autumnly for their contributions. A big thank you of course to
@jimH for raising funds to get us TRI in Vancouver. And a special thank you to Deb Hall and
@Will Sedley, two tinnitus researchers who reached out to us in order to engage directly with this community. You can read
Deb's blog post here, and get involved with
Will's work here.
As just a couple of volunteers who care about people suffering with tinnitus and with almost no budget, we are proud of what we accomplished. And proud of this community pulling together like it has. And it's really just the beginning, because we have a lot planned for 2020 when it comes to involving this community in research and steering research in the right direction!
All the best,
Hazel & Markku