Dress to Depress: An Invisible Illness Guide to Getting Ready for a Doctor's Appointment

CreakyJoints is a digital community for millions of arthritis patients and caregivers worldwide who seek education, support, advocacy, and patient-centered research. We represent patients through our popular social media channels, our website www.CreakyJoints.org, and the 50-State Network, which includes more than 1,500 trained volunteer patient activists.
 
As part of the Global Healthy Living Foundation, CreakyJoints also has a patient-reported outcomes registry called ArthritisPower® with nearly 30,000 consented arthritis patients who track their disease while volunteering to participate in longitudinal and observational research. CreakyJoints also publishes the popular “Raising the Voice of Patients” series, which are downloadable patient-centered navigational tools for managing chronic illness. For more information and to become a member (for free), visit www.CreakyJoints.org. To participate in our patient-centered research program, visit www.ArthritisPower.org.

© 2024 CreakyJoints. All rights reserved
Part of the Global Healthy Living Foundation

Could your appearance at a doctor's visit affect how you’re perceived and treated? The Sad Squad, a fictional “make-under” team that helps chronic illness patients accurately portray their symptoms, certainly thinks so. 

Watch as they prepare Grace for her upcoming rheumatologist visit.

More From the Campaign

The contents of this website are for informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice. CreakyJoints.org is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

One day about a decade ago, systemic-onset juvenile idiopathic arthritis patient Nicole Dalton realized that her doctors were not listening to her, nor taking her increasingly life-threatening symptoms seriously.

Her friend, also living with an invisible condition, enlightened her with this simple advice:

"You have to dress to match how you physically feel."

The change in doctor-patient communication that Nicole experienced was powerful and immediate. “I noticed a huge difference in the ways doctors listened to and treated me,” she says. 

“Of course, not every doctor is like this, but I find that many respond to how you look. This hack has helped me get the bloodwork, appointments, medications, and most importantly, the care that I knew I needed.”

More From the Campaign

Our Research

In 2020, we asked our community an important question: Does your appearance at the doctor’s office matter? At the time, 539 people shared how they felt about what they wore and how they presented themselves at medical appointments. But, as we all know, the world has changed since then.
 
With the rise of virtual care, working from home, and shifting public health priorities, we wanted to understand how these changes have impacted patients. So, in 2024, we conducted the survey again with over 2,300 CreakyJoints members.
This time, we also asked about virtual care, since it’s now a huge part of health care. Here’s what we learned about how patients’ habits and feelings have evolved.