2024 Mission Critical Accomplishments and Work

To all who supported us in the past year, thank you so much! Your contributions have helped us to accomplish the following goals, and ongoing work on research, advocacy, and education projects. I am incredibly excited to announce everything that we have accomplished within this first year and encouraged that next year will only be better and more effective for the misophonia community as a whole. It has been a great pleasure to watch the foundation grow, and I am incredibly humbled by those who have supported us during this initial period of growth.

The following are our accomplishments in our first year of operation, and our continued misophonia (and sensory related) commitments.

We made several strides toward our mission goals in the past year:

• Facilitated research studies and surveys on misophonia, misokinesia, and sensory processing disorders (we have completed 3 studies ready for the next part of analysis)

• Developed books and materials related to misophonia (Misophonia Matters published in March and we have another instalment coming out in October)

• Hosted an on online web conference in May (2024)

• Currently planning a second conference for research / community (for 2025, details to come soon)

• Provided a Clinician Directory for persons with misophonia to find clinicians that is actively updated

• Actively facilitating and promoting petitions that serve the misophonia/misokinesia/sensory communities (currently we have a petition to get misophonia in the DSM and ICD)

• Submitted our commentary to the active ICD proposal for misophonia.

• Created an Institutional Review Board (IRB) for misophonia research

• Created an academic journal for misophonia and developing guidance for editors of this journal

• Provided a web blog and news website that publishes the voices of sufferers of misophonia, their loved ones, clinicians, and researchers at www.misophoniainternational.com (pre-dates the IMF)

• Developed a web show for persons with misophonia, loved-ones, researchers and clinicians that is widely accessible and free and includes live Q&A. This show is also released at times through a podcast.

• A mix of free and paid webinars to provide education to clinicians, parents, teens, and adults with misophonia

• Developed classes for clinicians, parents, and adults/teens with misophonia

• Created resources for researchers, clinicians, and sufferers of misophonia

• Provided assistive technology for coping with misophonia/misokinesia such as headphones, sensory regulation items, earplugs, and other useful tools for coping (we made donations of earplugs, earbuds, headphones, and even a laptop).

• Contacted developers of operating systems, gaming systems, software, websites, and other technology to advocate for more sensory friendly design. We led a petition to ask Microsoft, Apple, and other industry leaders to implement changes for both misophonia and misokinesia. Apple has since created an option to remove the blinking text cursor caret | for users who choose to, a key part of our campaign. We are in active talks with Microsoft, Google, Affinity, and Canva at this time for more accessibility features.

• Consulted with other Misophonia organizations, researchers and practitioners and reached out to offer a community approach (misophonia alliance)

If you would like to help us continue our work, please consider donating! We are a registered 501 (c) (3) in Missouri, USA.