This is such an important topic and one that needs to be even more actively addressed in the public arena. I'm grateful to hear Drs. Young and Park openly discuss the dismissive attitudes of some of their peers toward the supposedly "invisible" symptoms of chronic pain. I'd argue the symptoms are not invisible at all, just stigmatized in their own right as belonging to that group of behaviors we've societally come to regard as "of weak character" or "slightly mental." Teri's story of the young woman who's life was lost to migrainous strokes, possibly because her migraine pain was dismissed by her family as bids for attention, deserves our close attention.

Already tools exist for doctors to quantify the disabling effects of chronic migraine pain such as the MIDAS questionairre, and they clearly need to be implemented more broadly, but what's also needed here is a paradigm shift in the way chronic pain is both treated and viewed by our entire society. Those of us who have suffered with chronic pain and been lucky enough to achieved some measure of relief owe it to those who are still in the depths of this struggle to help dig them out in whatever way we can. We need to educate ourselves about migraine stigma so we can better instruct our families and friends, our co-workers and our health care practitioners about the true costs of our disease. If you don't have enough stories of your own of being doubted and dismissed to spur you into action, remember this one young woman's story.