A trend in current juvenile fiction is the portrayal of characters with "hidden disabilities" that have become more common diagnoses in recent decades.

It also applies to those with visual or hearing losses, psychiatric illnesses and those with a range of "hidden disabilities," from epilepsy, cancer and diabetes to substance abuse.

Deafness is the hidden disability.

She campaigns to raise awareness of hidden disabilities and long term illness.

This "hidden" disability, currently untreated in about 85 percent of those affected, may be the nation's most damaging sensory handicap.

The symptoms of a variable condition could easily be overlooked in a medical assessment, and the assessment of a hidden disability depends on who is assessing.

So there are some 2,450,000 people in this country claiming money for "hidden" disabilities.

If a hidden disability is identified, resources can be used to place a child in a special education program that will help them progress in school.

She tried to place herself, in thus passing upon her own claims to consideration, in the hostile attitude of society toward her hidden disability.

Yet it is often a hidden disability, which isolates both the people who suffer from it and their families.