This is real

* Home * Forum * Chat * What is it like? * FAQs * Friends and Partners * Useful Links * Contact Us *


Frequently Asked Questions about Invisible Illnesses


This page is still being edited - so apologies for it being quite short!

How common are Invisible Illnesses?
Well, for this you need to look at how common each of the illnesses are individually. There are estimated to be anything from 0.004 - 2% of the populations who have ME/CFS (based on the stats from the The Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Association of America, the Centre for Disease Control, and the Royal Colleges Report).
Inflamatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, is estimated to affect about a million americans. The current population is 295,734,134, so 1/296 th of the population. This works out at about 0.003% of the population.
Celiac Disease is estimated to be anything up to 1 in every 133 people - but as low as 1 in every three hundred. This means it is anything between 0.003 and 0.007% of the population.
Fibromyalgia is said to affect 3/100 Canadians, or from between 2-4% of all people.
Asthma is thought to be present in 3-6% of the total population, but is more common in Children, and in some countries more than others. For example, New Zealand has the highest incidence of Asthma, with it affecting 20% of the population, and 13% in Australia.
A study by the CDC conculded that 1/3 of all women and 1/4 of all men suffer from Arthritis. This is 16% of the population between 18 and 44, and 39% of the population between 45 and 64, and 53% of those over 65.
It is estimated that up to 13% of the US population has Anxiety/panic disorders.
Up to 1% of adults can suffer from Manic Depression at some point in their lives.
Depression affects more than 5% of Americans with another 5% suffering from mild symptoms.
About 2% of the population has OCD in any given year.
Finally - phobias affect up to %5 of the population.

If you add all of these up, then you get a figure of between 61.01% and 75.01% of the population suffering from some form of invisible illness at any one time - although that does not allow for those who are suffering from more than one of the illnesses, so it is in fact lot less... But it does give you a good idea of the possibility of how common it is - with it affectinga much higher number of people than you would think.