Prevalence of Neurotic Disorders in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: A Cross-Sectional Study in an Egyptian Sample

Abstract Background Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, autoimmune inflammatory disease of the CNS. It is the most common chronic disabling disease of the CNS in young adults, affecting 2.3 million people worldwide. It is two times more common in females than in males and its onset is usually at young ages, namely around 30 years of age. Its most frequent and typical initial forms of presentation are neuritis optica or arrays of sensory-motor symptoms. Nevertheless, a small minority of patients (about 1%) experience changes in mood, behaviour, personality, or cognition as initial manifestations of MS. In contrast, as cases of MS progress, neuropsychiatric symptoms are very likely to appear; estimates indicate that they will affect two-thirds of all patients at some point. Objective To determine the percent and severity of neurotic disorders in a sample of Egyptian multiple sclerosis patients. Patients and Methods We conducted this observational cross sectional study at Nasr City health insurance outpatient clinic and MS unit at Ain Shams university Hospitals. We included 100 MS patients of all types according to McDonald's criteria (The 2017 revisions), adult age group above 18 years old. We excluded patients with other diseases that could clearly affect the patient psychiatric condition prior to the diagnosis of MS and patients with recent drug intake that could clearly affect psychiatric condition other than for documented psychiatric disease or MS. Results The current study shows that anxiety, and OCD are frequent among patients with MS in Egypt. There was significant relationship between development of neurotic illnesses and feeling pain/discomfort, also between development of neurotic illnesses and reporting anxiety/depression. Conclusion The current study shows that depression, anxiety, and OCD are frequent among patients with MS in Egypt. The results of this study are important for the improvement of the clinical management of MS patients. The psychiatric state of patients in this group should be investigated systematically, simultaneously with the assessment of their neurological state. Clinicians should have more focus on neurotic symptoms among people with MS disease to develop appropriate treatments for those patients. Finally, support programs should be made available for patients with MS to ensure adequate coping with the disease.