2023-12-15 10:23:21
There is no doubt that multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease, also affects the emotions of those who suffer from it. A digital application, EMO, helps manage the psychological impact of the disease.
The Multiple Sclerosis Foundation (FEM) has created the EMO digital application, with the collaboration of the pharmaceutical company Novartis, so that patients can identify these emotions in a disease that commemorates National Day on December 18.
According to the data cited by this foundation, multiple sclerosis can cause changes in emotional state and behavior, causing disorders, such as depressionwhich can affect up to 54% of people, or anxiety which can occur in 44% of cases.
Other more common psychological disorders and symptoms are: euphoria, emotional fluctuations or sudden mood changes, emotional flattening, uncontrolled laughing or crying, loss of consciousness or lack of initiative.
How does EMO work?
The EMO digital application, designed by Sara Navarro, clinical psychologist at the FEM, allows you to record the emotions that the person with multiple sclerosis feels in the different areas of their life: health, work and family.
For example, what feelings you experience, how you react to the changes of the disease, whether or not you share the disease with your work environment, or if you have a feeling of isolation.
The tool is based on algorithms that, depending on the problem or potentially conflictive situation exposed by the person in one of the different categories (health, work or family), the type of emotion it provokes and its intensity (rated by 1 to 10), will offer a series of strategies and resources that will help stabilize the situation and face changes in an adaptive way.
The information entered in EMO will be recorded because, on the one hand, the person can be aware of which resources have been most useful and their evolution, and, on the other hand, health professionals can obtain specific data to improve strategies. approach they propose.
“We have designed EMO with the aim of helping to improve the mental health of people with multiple sclerosis through emotional support strategies, so that they can develop adaptive skills and work on the self-awareness and autonomy necessary to face emotional crises derived from situations. that they have to face with the disease,” explains psychologist Sara Navarro.
For her part, the executive director of the Multiple Sclerosis FoundationRosa Masriera, specifies that EMO is one more step that complements “the psychological support that is already provided by the entity through individual and group psychological therapies, in addition to offering groups for emotional confrontation with the disease and workshops to help develop strategies. psychological with the aim of generating the empowerment of both the person with MS and their family members.”
Multiple sclerosis in Spain: 2,000 cases per year
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, inflammatory and demyelinating disease of the central nervous system of which, according to the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN), more than 2,000 cases are diagnosed in Spain each year.
Currently in Spain there are more than 55,000 people affected by this disease, which is not only the most common inflammatory disorder of the central nervous system, but is the main cause of non-traumatic disability among young adults in the Western world and the second most common disease. neurological -after epilepsy- more common among young adults.
The average age of onset of this disease is between 20 and 40 years and the majority of patients are women. Furthermore, throughout the world, in the last five years, the number of people affected by multiple sclerosis has increased by nearly 20%.
Since any part of the central nervous system can be affected, the symptoms of this disease are very varied and multiple.
In any case, both from the beginning of the disease and throughout its evolution, 100% of patients will develop visual symptoms (especially decreased vision); up to 95%, motor and/or sensory symptoms (balance alterations, loss of sensitivity or strength in the extremities…), up to 85% will experience cerebellar symptoms (tremors, ataxia,) and up to 68% and 45% will develop sphincter and cognitive problems, respectively.
In addition to other symptoms not specifically related to a myelin lesion, such as fatigue (which can worsen with heat), spasticity (suffered by more than 80% of patients at some point during the disease), depression or changes in mood. dream.
For this reason, 75% of patients with multiple sclerosis have some type of recognized disability.
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