Let’s work together to get migraine Out of the Dark

Yesterday the team at Migraine Australia launched our campaign for the next federal election. We’re asking for help to bring migraine out of the dark.

Migraine is hidden in the shadows; ignored, forgotten, overlooked. We are intentionally left out of survey questions about chronic illness, excluded from the definition of chronic illness for both research and medical care, and generally left to fend for ourselves in a health system that doesn’t like things it can’t test for or fix.

But there’s bloody millions of us just here in Australia. The health system and their entrenched biases have some excuse: no politician has an excuse for ignoring 20% of the electorate. Even when migraine was believed to be a vascular headache (the underlying cause of our issues with the health system), politicians still should have cared about 20% of their votes.

Morrison unilaterally declared he was going to move the Australian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, international consequences be damned, for the 12% of the Wentworth electorate who identifies as Jewish… why isn’t there a whopping announcement for migraine every election? Where’s our pork? Where’s our highly irresponsible, unresearched commitments to get some cheap votes?

Pork is not actually what the campaign is asking for. It’s asking, calmly and respectfully, for our fair share.

For our fair share of research funding, as opposed to just $8.9m over the last decade and literally nothing in the last two years.

For our fair share of government planning and leadership in the form of a national strategy, in full acknowledgment that migraine can break entire systems like the PBS if that planning doesn’t happen.

For our fair share of awareness of what migraine is, and a little respect in the public sphere, rather than being a joke, a sickie, an excuse.

Our fair share of support at work, so we can stay in our careers rather than getting managed out of them.

Our fair share of access to care, including appropriate access to specialist care, allied health care, more appropriate emergency care for crisis support, all the new medications on the PBS, subsidise access to the non-drug devices, and access to disability support pension, NDIS and other disability supports when required.

And our fair share of support for the migraine community through resources and coordinators for our peer support groups and advocacy services.

Only we can get migraine out of the dark. Only we can stop hiding under our doonas and behind our sunglasses, and demand those who want our votes start talking to our issues. Making migraine part of your vote decision does not mean other issues don’t matter – it just means migraine matters too.

Let’s do this.