World MS Day 2025

There are multiple sclerosis (MS) awareness weeks and months that come at different times in the calendar depending on the country in which one lives.

There are fundraising events and activities scattered throughout the year that offer people in one place or another an opportunity to answer questions as they might arise.

But there’s only one World MS Day, which falls on May 30 every year, and that’s the day the world can hear from us in one voice on one topic.

How to Take Action on World MS Day 2025

Each year, World MS Day establishes a theme whereby we can all “share stories, raise awareness, and campaign with everyone affected by multiple sclerosis.”

This year’s event kicks off the My MS Diagnosis campaign. And although World MS Day takes place on a single day, events and media campaigns are scheduled throughout the months of May and June around the theme.

There are many ways the MS International Federation (MSIF) — the initiators of World MS Day — suggest one might get involved (or boldly organize something themselves), including:

• Lobbying decision-makers to improve early and accurate diagnosis for everyone living with MS
• Highlighting global and national barriers to accessing an MS diagnosis
• Building informed, caring communities and systems that support people diagnosed with MS
• Raising awareness and building solidarity by sharing experiences of an MS diagnosis
• Advocating for better MS training and awareness among healthcare professionals
• Supporting new research and clinical advancements in MS diagnosis

I, personally, will be hosting a webcast for MS Ireland on May 29 (7 p.m. Irish time, 2 p.m. Eastern U.S. time) for which you can register to watch live.

In preparing for that webcast, it struck me how significant to each individual their diagnosis of this disease is or was and how impactful those stories are to the media and the general public (which is great for awareness) and yet how ultimately limited those narratives are.

The Limits of the Diagnosis Story

Don’t get me wrong. Hearing other people’s diagnosis stories is an important part of getting our heads around MS. Each of us has a diagnosis experience and, as with just about every other aspect of MS, they can be quite dissimilar.

It’s a personal and powerful time in the lives of each one of us with MS, and it’s helpful for us to share our stories as a way of both catharsis and exorcism. But little of the details of my experience will match yours or yours to anyone else’s.

And at the end of the day, the diagnosis story is but a single chapter in the lives we write for ourselves with this disease.

Most of Our Lives With MS Happen After Diagnosis

In explaining this to the producer of our upcoming webcast, I said, “It’s like a person’s life with MS is a novel. When we talk only about the diagnosis story, it’s as though three-quarters of the book is taken up by the first chapter.”

What and how we tell the story of hearing the words “You have multiple sclerosis” are the opening pages in the rest of the story. We should craft those pages in a way that makes people want to know the rest of our tale.

As World MS Day comes around just once per year, providing us with the unique opportunity of having the eyes and ears of the whole world on our community, it’s up to us to be prepared to answer the questions and tell the stories if we’re asked — and to be willing to speak up even if we’re not asked.

Wishing you and your family the best of health.

Cheers,

Trevis