(apologies - have asked this question before but there may be new users on this site.)
Some years ago close relative admitted to a mental hospital - very agitated and delusional. Given ECT and some drugs.
Things settled down but relative was not the same - unable to hold any job down - physically slowed up - little interest in anything. In bed a lot of the time.
Relative died a few years later - heart problems.
M.S. never mentioned but as I have m.s. I wonder in retrospect if relative did as well.
2 questions -
can m.s. be responsible for a severe mental condition - I don’t mean being depressed or anxious because someone has m.s.?
– what might the effect of ECT be on some one with m.s.?
I don’t think MS can possibly be related to a severe mental condition. Cognitive problems, yes, proper mental illness, no. Although obviously both can and do, exist side by side in many cases.
As far as the effects of an ECT on a person with MS, that’s a question for the professionals.
I have a friend who has been badly affected by MS - can’t walk or stand, has a supra-pubic catheter, has had epileptic fits. She has also had bad mental problems - believed for a long time that her husband was poisoning her, for example. I have always thought that the mental problems were a symptom of her MS - that a part of her brain responsible for judgement had lesions on it.
More generally, it doesn’t make sense to me that lesions in someone’s brain could cause all sorts of problems but never the kind that would be classified as mental illness - delusions, aggression, extreme lack of inhibitions and so on. I’d say the answer to the first question is yes and I have no idea about the answer to the second question.
if indeed m.s. lesions can cause mental illness it has massive implications - how would you treat that mental illness etc. And don’t some mental illnesses come and go - relapse and remit?? I had a friend who was dx’d with m.s. whilst in a mental hospital due to a supposed ‘schizophrenic episode’
I have a serious mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, and recently diagnosed with MS as well. There has been no mention from either psychiatrist or neurologist that it is anything other than a very unfortunate coincidence.