An Adelaide teenager is pleading with parents and doctors to stop telling kids to “toughen up”, saying bouts of pain may be masking something sinister.
Lucy O’Neill was diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis when she was 14 years old after years of struggling with chronic pain.
Now 19 years old, she has described how it took years of agony and numerous doctor visits, with little to no answers, before she was finally given a diagnosis.
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“It’s been a long time coming,” O’Neill told 7NEWS.
“And it’s slowly improving.”
O’Neill said that it was difficult to continuously “prove” to doctors that she was in pain and that something was wrong, and was instead told to toughen up.
“You start to question yourself, and whether your pain is actually valid,” she said.
She said she was made to feel that “nothing was wrong” so she should “just get on with it”.
However, new research from the University of South Australia shows O’Neill is not the only young person struggling to have their pain taken seriously, with the study showing a staggering one in four children are suffering chronic pain.
Among the most common chronic pains for children include recurrent abdominal pain, headaches, back pain, fibromyalgia and juvenile arthritis.
However, child’s pain researcher Dr Sarah Wallwork told 7NEWS that these types of conditions are as common in children as they are with adults, but children are having to “prove they’re in pain”.
“They feel disbelieved or dismissed, or told that it’s growing pains,” she said.
“They’re told by their sporting coaches ‘oh, that’s an old man disease’.”
Wallwork warned that when children are disbelieved or dismissed, it can impact their emotions and mental health with long-lasting impacts into adulthood.
O’Neill is now being treated for her arthritis, which includes doing weights in the gym, a practice that helps keep her pain under control.
“It can be really empowering to have people believe you,” O’Neill said.
