While many with MS will experience depression or anxiety at some point, more rarely, some people experience changes to their emotions or behaviour that don't seem to make sense, or that they aren't able to control.
Study participants with MS were compared to a control group. The researchers found that people with MS were more likely to be angry (trait anger), have a higher intensity of anger (state anger), and express anger either outwardly or inwardly, as compared to the control group.
Psychiatric symptoms in MS are highly prevalent and frequently overlooked in clinical settings. In 1 study of relapsing-remitting patients with MS in remission, 95% reported significant psychiatric symptoms, most frequently dysphoria (79%), agitation (40%), anxiety (40%), and irritability (35%).
A change in cognitive function or cognitive dysfunction is common in MS — more than half of all people with MS will develop problems with cognition. It may have been your first symptom of MS.
Depression can occur in up to 50 percent of MS patients and is three times more common than in the general population. Up to 40 percent of support partners, such as caregivers and spouses, may also experience depression at some point in life.
MS can affect mood
worry, fear, moodiness, irritability and anxiety: normal in the face of unpredictability; anyone can become a bit irritable when faced with difficult challenges. depression is one of the most common symptoms of MS and a major risk factor for suicide.
Problems with memory and thinking - also called 'cognitive problems' - can affect people with MS, but most people will be affected mildly. Some people find it harder to find the right words, to concentrate or to recall things quickly.
Psychotic symptoms reported in MS patients include hallucinations and delusions (mostly paranoid), irritability/agitation, sleep disturbance, grandiosity, blunted affect, and rare symptoms like catatonia and transient catalepsy [45].
There is another way in which MS can affect behaviour and mood. MS causes changes in parts of the brain and spinal cord. Lesions (MS plaques and other brain changes) in the brain sometimes result in behavioural changes.
Most of the studies show that acute short-term stress has no negative effects on the progress of MS. However, chronic psychosocial stresses, such as interpersonal conflict, loss of loved ones, lack of social support, anxiety and depression were identified as risk factors to aggravate the symptoms of patients with MS.
The reported rate of psychosis in MS patients has been 2%–3% (unlike 0.5%–1% in normal people). Some major disorders have been reported in this group, which generally start and appear in psychotic disorders.
Those symptoms include loss of vision in an eye, loss of power in an arm or leg or a rising sense of numbness in the legs. Other common symptoms associated with MS include spasms, fatigue, depression, incontinence issues, sexual dysfunction, and walking difficulties.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS). Recently, numerous studies have shown that MS disrupts a number of social cognitive abilities, including empathy, theory of mind (ToM), and facial emotion recognition.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) triggers that worsen symptoms or cause a relapse can include stress, heart disease and smoking. While some are easier to avoid than others, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and overall health and wellness can have outsized benefits for MS patients.
Increased fatigue. Tingling or numbness anywhere on the body. Brain fog, or difficulty thinking. Muscle spasms.
In many patients, over a span of 5 to 15 years, the attacks begin more indolently, persist more chronically and remit less completely, gradually transforming into a pattern of steady deterioration rather than episodic flares. This pattern is referred to as secondary progressive MS.
Results People with MS showed less adjustment to risk and slower decision-making than controls. Moreover, impaired decision-making correlated with reduced executive function, memory and processing speed. Decision-making impairments were most prevalent in people with secondary progressive MS.
Racing thoughts are described as those rapid thought patterns we engage in when we experience anxiety. We can have them at any time of day or night, and they can be triggered by personal or external challenges that may or may not be related to MS.
Thinking and memory problems, also known as cognitive problems, are common in MS. Issues include memory, attention span, planning, decision making, understanding or concentration. Problems with thinking and memory affect around half of all people with MS.
MS-related brain fog affects many people living with MS. In fact, it's estimated that more than half of people living with MS will develop cognitive issues. People may experience such things as forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, and confusion.
Remarkable degrees of aggression have been described in up to 23% of patients with MS (Rosti-Otajärvi & Hämäläinen, 2013), but few studies have targeted this outcome in psychopathological assessments on these individuals.
The pathologic hallmark of multiple sclerosis is multiple focal areas of myelin loss within the CNS called plaques or lesions, accompanied by variable gliosis and inflammation and by relative axonal preservation. Active multiple sclerosis lesions are infiltrated by macrophages containing myelin debris.
There is no definite measure or laboratory marker for the diagnosis of MS, yet. Both the clinical features of the disease, and laboratory investigations such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analyses are being used.