Community Survey Results
100 IAPMD community members participated in our Community Priority Survey. This online survey asked IAPMD community members to rate IAPMD’s five priority areas in order of importance. The majority (87.2%) of survey participants identified themselves as a “Patient” while the remaining participants identified as a Friend, Health Care Provider, Family Member, Mental Health Provider, or Partner.
As IAPMD continues to develop a five-year strategic plan, we invited our community members to prioritize our five focus areas in order of importance to you. 1 = Most Important, 5 = Least Important.
34% of repondants rated Care & Support as the number one priority, followed closely by Research & Prevention (28.9%), Education & Awareness (27.8%), Funding (8.2%), and lastly Advocacy & Public Policy (1%).
Participants were also asked to share why they rated these priority areas as they did and the feedback was highly informative. Here are just a few of the many comments we received.
“Immediate needs of suffers first, then for advances to treat pmdd”
“[The] Medical Community need to be aware and looking out for this disorder... too many times it gets misdiagnosed”
“Education on these disorders can be hard to come by, that’s why it’s most important to me, for years I thought I was bipolar, I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
“I am a researcher working on premenstrual disorder and would love to see IAPMD is more advocated in research.”
“Because I feel this area is chronically under researched, and there is still a huge lack of awareness about PMDD and the impact hormones have on mental health. All 5 areas are important, and none of it can really happen without funding.”
“This was a difficult choice, I feel all of these are top priorities. I placed funding first because you must have money to accomplish goals. With the money, you can conduct the research necessary to help identify and treat this illness. I believe the results from the research will help in presenting a case for new ways to treat patients and perhaps create rules and laws to assist suffers and maybe even their families.”
“At this time I am most interested in learning most about how I can help myself. Almost equally important to me though is advocacy and ensuring that others begin to learn more about what others like me are going through.”
“I would like to know what research is being done to understand PMDD more to understand if this is a gene issue or a liver metabolising issue. What is the effect of cortisol and PMDD. What is the role of trauma and PMDD. Understanding all this will also assist prevention and healing.”
“I am a spouse to a woman with PMDD. It is critical to support the partnership for both affected by this awful disease. It threatens the strongest bonds. Next, raising awareness of what it means to struggle with it and then funding to support research and policy.”
Do the survey results line up with your priorities? Tell us below!