Martina Blake, Services Manager for Arthritis Ireland shares some background on the focus of this year’s event and plans for future webinars. 

Following on from the very successful Fibromyalgia summit held in 2019, Arthritis Ireland was delighted to host an interactive webinar to mark World Fibromyalgia awareness day on May 12th . The focus of this year’s webinar was “Women and Fibromyalgia”, given the evidence that suggests the majority of people living with fibromyalgia are female. The webinar ran through the life cycle, and main transitions and events in women’s lives; hormones, pregnancy and menopause. We had two fabulous speakers from Harold’s Cross, Dorcas Mafuva CNS with a specialism in fibromyalgia, and Louise Moore ANP Rheumatology with expertise in rheumatology and pregnancy. To get a good perspective on the emotional and mental health side of living with fibromyalgia we also had Caroline Martin our guest speaker who is a trauma-informed psychologist with an interest in the mind-body connection and who gave a powerful message about the relationship between the body and the mind but also of healing and recovery. 

The interest in the webinar was amazing and we had over 500 people register for attendance and although not everyone could make it on the night the webinar is recorded and is available to watch below. 

Such was the interest in the topic that we plan to run more webinars in the Autumn. We usually run a half-day workshop on pain but this year we are going to deliver a series of six webinars on dealing with the various aspects of pain from medication, mental health, food, exercise, communication and lots more.