Necessity of Psychological Support in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis | 2002, Volume 8 - Issue 4

Şule Özden TOPKAYA¹, Meral OĞUZ², Fatma UZUNYEL², Serkan ÖZAKBAŞ², Köksal ALPTEKİN¹, Egemen İDİMAN²

¹Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Psikiyatri AD
²Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Nöroloji AD

Keywords: Disability, multiple sclerosis, psychiatric disorder, psychological support

Abstract

Multiple Sclerosis(MS) is a chronic demyelinating disease which shows episodes with various symptoms. MS affects central nervous system white matter in multiple locations and is one of the main reasons of neurological disabilities. Psychiatric disorders among the patients with multiple sclerosis are more frequent than normal population. In this study, it was determined whether or not the patients had any psychological problems in the previous years or within the last four weeks using a questionnaire completed with 192 MS patients. Correlation between psychological problems, progress of MS and disability were investigated, and it was found that psychological problems were more frequent in progressive forms of MS.