The Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF), a digital patient chronic disease community, announced Dress to Depress, an irreverent video take on reality TV series such as “Dress to Impress” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” The video highlights an aspect of the complicated reality that chronic disease patients face when they visit their health care provider – how they choose to dress.

The video features LA-based singer, comedian, and 30-year chronic disease patient Nicole Dalton, who also wrote, directed, and produced it. All cast members live with a chronic illness.

The campaign — including the video, articles, and survey results — marks GHLF’s proactive effort to empower people with chronic diseases to take control of their narrative at doctors’ appointments, ensuring their symptoms and needs are fully recognized and understood.

An updated GHLF survey underscores this need, suggesting that many people living with chronic disease make decisions about their appearance to get their doctors to take their health concerns more seriously.

The COVID Interruption

In early 2020, before the COVID pandemic, CreakyJoints, the GHLF bone, skin, and joint community, conducted a survey asking: Does your appearance at the doctor’s office matter? At that time, 539 respondents shared insights on how their clothing and presentation affected their medical appointments. The survey was initially intended to launch a campaign addressing these findings, but the initiative was put on hold as the COVID-19 pandemic shifted GHLF’s priorities toward virtual care, staying safe as an immunocompromised person, and how chronically ill people would work from home.

Recognizing changes in health care delivery and lifestyle post-pandemic, CreakyJoints repeated the survey in 2024 with over 2,300 members, adding questions about virtual care to capture updated patient habits and perspectives in the post-pandemic era. This expanded survey explores how the dynamics of patient-doctor interactions have evolved and aims to highlight the role of appearance and behavior in both in-person and virtual appointments.

Key survey results:

• Appearance influences perception: 65 percent of respondents felt that their clinician’s perception of them was influenced by their appearance, with 34 percent of participants saying they “dress up” for appointments, while 6 percent “dress down.” Many who “dress up” indicated they did so out of respect for their clinician or to be taken more seriously, while those who “dress down” felt it helped validate their symptoms and avoided giving the impression they felt well.
• Being candid with doctors: The survey found that 61 percent of patients share all their symptoms with their doctor, a statistic unchanged since 2020. However, 39 percent hold back on certain details. Reasons for not being fully candid include concerns about forgetting details (13 percent), limited time during appointments (12 percent), fear of appearing as a “problem patient” (11 percent), and not wanting to seem like they are “complaining” (9 percent). Additionally, 5 percent expressed hesitation to discuss symptoms to avoid potential medication or treatment changes.
• Telehealth use: 54 percent of respondents reported that they never use telehealth or virtual appointments, while 25 percent said they rarely use them. Only 7 percent reported using telehealth often. For those who use telehealth, most respondents agreed that the telehealth/virtual appointments did not differ from in-person visits, clinicians had a good understanding of their symptoms without a physical examination, and clinicians spent less time than usual.

“Impressions are formed quickly, and it’s understandable that patients want to project a positive attitude and look put-together when visiting a doctor, even if symptoms are impacting quality of life,” said Seth Ginsberg, President and Co-founder of CreakyJoints, the arthritis digital community of GHLF. “This survey highlights that many patients are thoughtful about their appearance and behavior to foster more meaningful conversations with their clinician. GHLF aims to provide resources, tools, and inspiration — including our Dress to Depress video — to support patients in making the most of their appointments.”

About Dress to Depress

Inspired by cast members with often-invisible chronic illnesses like arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and gastroparesis, Dress to Depress: An Invisible Illness Guide to Getting Ready for a Doctor’s Appointment creatively highlights the challenges of preparing for medical visits. The video follows a fictional arthritis patient who undergoes a “make-under” and receives practical tips for her rheumatology appointment.

Ms. Dalton, living with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (SJIA), shared that dressing down to reflect her symptoms often led to more attentive care. “Looking too healthy sometimes made my symptoms feel dismissed by doctors,” she explained. “Adjusting my appearance to align with my symptoms has helped me get the follow-up care I need.”

Dalton played a role on the “make-under” team, the Sad Squad.

For more information, including the full Dress to Depress video, articles, and survey results, visit creakyjoints.org/dress. Join the conversation and share your own experiences on social media with the hashtag #DressToDepress.

About the Survey

The survey was conducted with individuals self-reporting a variety of chronic and rheumatic diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to inflammatory bowel disease and beyond. In pre-COVID 2020 and 2024, most respondents were female and white, with an average age of 60, and about 53 percent held a college degree or higher.

About Global Healthy Living Foundation

The Global Healthy Living Foundation is a U.S. based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, international organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life for people with chronic illnesses by advocating for improved access to health care through education, patient-centered clinical research, support, advocacy, and economic and policy research. GHLF is also a staunch advocate for vaccines. The Global Healthy Living Foundation is the parent organization of CreakyJoints®, the international, digital community for millions of people living with arthritis and their supporters worldwide who seek education, support, activism, and patient-centered research in English, Spanish, and French.

In addition to arthritis and autoimmune disorders, GHLF supports dermatology, gastroenterology, neurology, cardiology, oncology, infectious disease, rare disease, and pulmonary patients through a host of different programs and activities which draw more than 700,000 patients a month to GHLF websites and create more than 10 million impressions a month on seven social media platforms. GHLF totals more than 3.7 million views with its patient-centered audio-visual content, found on YouTube and totals more than 840,000 listens on podcast platforms. GHLF never asks the public for donations, receiving funding instead through governments, non-governmental organizations, foundations, industry, family foundations and co-founder Louis Tharp. Visit ghlf.org for more information.

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