Opinion: Awareness week overload

Locals ended Dementia-friendly Awareness Week with a purple bike ride. Photo / File

Let's talk about *blank* awareness week.

All you need to do is fill in the blank with your worthy cause, disease, culture or charity and chances are there's an awareness week for it.

Some are well established and supported nationwide, like Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, New Zealand Conservation Week and Mental Health Awareness Week.

Others I only found out about after a quick Google search, like New Zealand Flowers Week, Teach a Kid to Sew Week and Sea Week.

There's an awareness week for nearly every culture in New Zealand and I think you would be hard pressed to find a medical condition that didn't at least have a day once a year dedicated to it.

And while celebrating and sharing your culture, or wanting more people to understand the plights of a particular disease is important and worthwhile, with a growing list of "unofficial" awareness months, weeks and days in New Zealand, it does bring into question whether this saturation is lessening their impact.

With a new topic being celebrated or recognised seemingly every week, it's easy for the average New Zealander to become apathetic about it all.

The clincher me was an email that dropped into my inbox earlier this week declaring that from October 22 to 28 it would be Massage Awareness Week.

Why do massages need awareness?

Well, according to the press release, there's so many massage providers that "clients may be at risk by the lack of awareness around how to choose a massage therapist".

Sure, the organisation wants to help its clients make informed decisions. Great. But does it really need a whole awareness week? It seems to me something you could quickly solve on Google, based on what kind of massage you need.

In October there's also Pink Ribbon Day for breast cancer, Mental Health Awareness Week, World Teachers Day, Tokelauan, Fijian, Tuvaluan and Niuean Language Weeks, Grandparents Week and Stroke Week.

Note, that's eight awareness weeks crammed into a four-week month - and those are just the ones I could find.

I'm calling it New Zealand: We've gone awareness week crazy.