Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Demyelination Disorders

Abstract

Inflammatory demyelinating diseases are defined as being a miscellaneous group of disorders that develop as a consequence of an acute or chronic inflammatory process. The types of demyelinating disease with a high prevalence are multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica and acute-disseminated encephalomyelitis. Patients with multiple sclerosis frequently experience depressive and anxiety symptoms including cognitive impairments. Depression is correlated with an unsatisfatory quality of life, having a conceivably important psychological impact on all the aspects of the patient’s live, including less efficient coping mechanisms and a decreased compliance with disease-modifying drugs. As a general rule among population, depression in multiple sclerosis patients is regularly correlated with anxiety. The clinical importance of neuropsychiatric symptoms should not be neglected because multiple sclerosis patients are more prone to be affected in all the aspects of life, in view of the morbidity that these symptoms bring in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.