Manage the Emotional Impact of SPMS

When you're dealing with secondary progressive MS, it can be difficult to manage your emotions. But we think that this is really important to do because those emotions can spill over to your relationships. It can spill over to your work setting. And it can have a lot of different negative impacts on you.

If a patient with secondary progressive MS is noticing problems managing their emotions, working with a psychologist and getting therapy can be really helpful because they can learn methods to cope with that anxiety or depression, the emotions that they might be feeling.

Also, they can talk to their doctor about medications, such as antidepressants that might help. I think support groups are really important for helping manage emotions. There's really just nothing like talking to people that are in the exact same boat and know really what you're going through.

So we know secondary progressive MS is a disease that affects the brain and affects brain functioning. So that can affect a variety of different thinking skills. So the cognitive changes can be treated with cognitive rehabilitation, where a patient would work with a speech therapist or a neuropsychologist and learn ways to improve functioning in the specific areas they're having trouble. Also in other areas, just working around problems. That would be things like, just becoming a list taker if you've never done that before; relying on calendars and written reminders more frequently; just little things that can help make your daily life have less hassles.