Emotional
Emotional symptoms are also common and are thought to be both a normal response to having a debilitating disease and the result of damage to specific areas of the central nervous system that generate and control emotions.
Clinical depression is the most common neuropsychiatric condition: lifetime depression prevalence rates of 40–50% and 12 month prevalence rates around 20% have been typically reported for samples of people with MS; these figures are considerably higher than those for the general population or for people with other chronic illnesses. Brain imaging studies have tried to relate depression to lesions in certain regions of the brain have met with variable success. On balance the evidence seems to favour an association with neuropathology in the left anterior temporal/parietal regions.
Other feelings such as anger, anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness also appear frequently and suicide is a very real threat since it results in 15% of deaths in MS sufferers.
Read more about this topic: Multiple Sclerosis Signs And Symptoms
Famous quotes containing the word emotional:
“Children should know there are limits to family finances or they will confuse “we can’t afford that” with “they don’t want me to have it.” The first statement is a realistic and objective assessment of a situation, while the other carries an emotional message.”
—Jean Ross Peterson (20th century)
“For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver—that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who ... have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)