RSI-UK Mailing List

What is RSI?

RSI stands for Repetitive Strain Injury. It is used as an umbrella term to refer to various kinds of work-related musculoskeletal injuries - for instance, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, tenosynovitis, bursitis, epicondylitis, and others.

Such injuries are also known as Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTDs), Work-Related Upper Limb Disorders (WRULDs), and Occupational Overuse Injuries. Doctors and other healthcare professionals tend not to use these shorthand terms, but instead refer to the problems by their separate and specific names, e.g. tendonitis.

Worried about RSI?

If you think that you may have RSI problems - if your hands hurt or tingle, or if you get pain in your elbow, wrist, or shoulder - you should make an appointment to see your GP as soon as possible. The sooner you find out about it and do something about it, the better your chances of a full recovery.

There is no single answer to RSI, but there are a lot of things that can help. Communicating with others who face the same problems, is one way to find out about some of those things.

The national UK support organisation for RSI sufferers is the RSI Association. The RSIA can offer advice and information about the many different aspects of coping with RSI.

In many areas around the UK, there are also local support groups, whose members meet regularly and exchange experiences and information and offer one another mutual support. The RSI Association can tell you whether or not there is a local support group in your area.

Advice found on this website does not come from doctors and should not be used as a substitute for obtaining professional medical attention.

Join the mailing list

A mailing list is an email discussion group. Messages sent to the mailing list are copied to each member, so that each person in the group can comment and respond or ask new questions. There are many publicly accessible mailing lists on the Internet, for discussion of all kinds of topics.

RSI-UK is an online support group, whose members meet through the mailing list, rather than face-to-face. Like the face-to-face groups, RSI-UK is run by volunteers, most of whom have RSI themselves.

To join the list, send an empty email to . Please read the acceptible use policy before you join.

Alternatively, you can send mail to with the command "join" in the body of your message, not in the subject line. Don't include the quotation marks.

You will receive a "request for confirmation". Please reply to this, including the whole of the message in your reply (you don't need to add anything extra). You should then receive confirmation that you have been added to the list, and you will start receiving the messages and will be able to post to the list.

To receive the list in digest form (each day's messages concatenated into a single message per day), send mail to with the command "digest" in the body of the message - not in the subject line. Don't include the quotation marks. Use the "digest" command also if you're already on the list and want to start getting it as a digest instead of as individual messages.

To leave the list, send an empty email to .