One of the reasons why MS is such a difficult disease to live with is MS depression. MS depression is a form of depression triggered either directly or indirectly by MS. It impacts patients’ moods, their level of interest in daily life, their sleep patterns and their capacity to concentrate on tasks. MS patients experiencing clinical depression may also be plagued by constant thoughts of suicide or death, and they may experience fatigue much of the time. Their depression can also manifest physically as a headache or as pain in the neck.
Discussing the Causes of MS Depression
The factors specific to MS that can trigger depression are worthy of exploration here. One of them is the progressive damage to the neural tissue as the disease progresses. With demyelination and the associated destructive processes, the brain tissue develops lesions, which have a direct impact on the processes controlled by the affected parts of the brain. If the damage spreads to the brain tissue that regulates the patient’s emotions, the end result could be clinical depression and changes in the patient’s behavior.
The damage occasioned by multiple sclerosis involves much more than lesions in the areas of the brain that regulate behavior. It can also involve damage to the delicate balance between the immune system and the neuroendocrine system. The consequent changes in hormone levels can affect the progression of the MS and can also trigger MS depression. The interactions of the neuroendocrine system and the immune system in the development of this form of MS depression are illustrative of the interconnections between different bodily systems. They reveal the complexities behind the working of the human body and the degree to which the progression of MS triggers a domino effect in the interconnected systems.
Clinical depression in MS patients can also be triggered by the overwhelming nature of the prognosis and the limitations that patients experience with their progressive pain and disability. The fact that MS is a chronic disease for which conventional medicine knows no permanent cures, and the knowledge that weakness, neurological symptoms and partial blindness may lie ahead will traumatize any patient. Some patients will spend time grieving over this and, ultimately, adjust their expectations and learn to live with it. Other patients will be unable to make the adjustment. Instead, their lives will be ruled by a sense of total hopelessness, and they will focus on the desire to die. When this condition persists, failing to relent even when there is an upturn in the patients’ conditions, it is evidence of clinical depression, an illness that will have to be treated medically. MS depression should be taken seriously for the patients’ sakes.
