Patients with multiple sclerosis present low levels of empathy

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neuroimmunological disease that mainly affects young adults, leading to neurological disabilities over the course of their lives. Many psychiatric conditions have been reported in patients with MS, but there are remarkably few studies assessing empathy among these patients. Methods This is a single center, cross-sectional study, of 34 patients with MS and 34 matched control subjects. A specific questionnaire (empathy quotient) was used. Results Patients with MS showed significantly lower levels of empathy. This finding was not correlated with disease duration, degree of disability, drugs for treating MS or lesion load on resonance magnetic imaging. Conclusion Decreased empathy is a frequent condition in patients with MS and should be addressed in order to diminish the psychosocial burden of this neurological disease.

Empathy in multiple sclerosis––Correlates with cognitive, psychological and occupational functioning

“…Furthermore, we expect to find correlations between higher empathy and better executive functioning (Kraemer et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017), information processing speed (Pottgen et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017;Chalah et al, 2017) and learning and delayed memory (Pottgen et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017), and between higher empathy and better occupational functioning. In accordance with previous studies, we do not expect to find correlations between empathy and disease duration, disability and symptoms of depression (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2015;Almeida et al, 2016;Kraemer et al, 2013;Chalah et al, 2017). These correlations may not be unique to individuals with MS, and we therefore expect similar correlations between empathy and cognitive, psychological and occupational functioning in healthy controls.…”

“…Our objectives are (1) to examine whether empathy differs between individuals with MS and controls, (2) to examine relations between empathy and cognitive, psychological and occupational functioning. Based on previous studies, we expect to find reduced empathy in individuals with MS as compared with healthy controls (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2015;Almeida et al, 2016;Kraemer et al, 2013;Banati et al, 2010;Pottgen et al, 2013). Furthermore, we expect to find correlations between higher empathy and better executive functioning (Kraemer et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017), information processing speed (Pottgen et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017;Chalah et al, 2017) and learning and delayed memory (Pottgen et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017), and between higher empathy and better occupational functioning.…”

“…Recent studies reported decreased social cognitive skills in individuals with MS (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2015;Almeida et al, 2016;Kraemer et al, 2013;Banati et al, 2010;Pottgen et al, 2013;Cotter et al, 2016) which may have important implications for their social and occupational functioning. The current study examined differences in empathy between individuals with MS and healthy controls.…”

“…Recent studies provide evidence for reduced empathy and ToM in individuals with MS, even in the early stages of relapsing-remitting MS (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2015;Almeida et al, 2016;Kraemer et al, 2013;Banati et al, 2010;Pottgen et al, 2013). Individuals with MS were specifically impaired in the recognition of negative facial emotional expressions and the ability to infer mental states of others during visual tasks (i.e.…”

“…images and videos) (Cotter et al, 2016). Impairments in social cognition in MS were generally not found to be related to disease duration, degree of disability, relapse rate or disease course (Gleichgerrcht et al, 2015;Almeida et al, 2016;Kraemer et al, 2013;Dulau et al, 2017). Positive associations have been demonstrated between social cognition and the traditionally investigated cognitive functions (i.e.…”