Marital Satisfaction and Mental Health in Multiple Sclerosis Patients’ and Healthy Individuals’ Accordance to Sex

Bita Ajilchi,Flor Rezaeai Kargar,Arezoo Shomali Oskoei

doi:10.4236/psych.2013.411121

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare marital satisfaction and mental health in male and female multiple sclerosis patients with healthy males and females. In a correlation study, 59 MS patients in Tehran (31 female and 28 male, with a range of 25 to 55 years old) were selected by the random cluster sampling method and 59 healthy individuals were matched with them in sex and age. Then both groups filled in the marital satisfaction questionnaire of Enrich and GHQ. The test of multi-variance analysis showed that, regardless of the gender, for people with MS disease, the marital satisfaction and the whole of its subscales except the religion and the mental health and its all sub-scales, are established at a significantly low level. However, the comparison of these groups due to the gender showed that in the satisfaction elements and personality issues, the relationship between marital and leisure time of women patients is worse than men; however, healthy women scores in financial management are lower than healthy men. In addition, in the elements of mental health, women and men patients are similar to each other but healthy women have higher physical symptoms than healthy men (P

Highlights

The disease of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic progressive and disabling disease of the central neural system that is seen frequently among young people
The disease of MS affects intimacy and sexual relations in various ways. These impacts can appear as the reduction or a tendency to reluctance towards the sexual relations or difficulty in having friendly relations with his or her partner
In the comparison of the genders, there is a significant difference between the personality issues, children and parenting, relatives and friends and religious orientation

Summary

Introduction

The disease of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic progressive and disabling disease of the central neural system that is seen frequently among young people. Symptoms commonly include sensory disorder, infirmity, spasm, vision disorder, and cognitive disorder, trembling of limbs, disorder in urination, sexual functional disorder, and amnesia, auditory failure, blurring of vision and squinting in patients (Delisa, 1998; Levis, 2000; Nortvedt et al, 2007; Smeltzer & Bar, 2008) Observations show that this disease is two or three times more common in women than men; it does not have a definite treatment and the aim of the treatment is to prevent the progressive disability from the chronic attacks, relapses and recurrence of the disease and or chronic progression of the disease (Compston Lassman, Ebers et al, 1998; Brown, 2005; Harrison, 2008). These impacts can appear as the reduction or a tendency to reluctance towards the sexual relations or difficulty in having friendly relations with his or her partner These impacts are from the direct changes of the related disease and or due to the struggles against the disease as well as adaptation with these impacts on the patient’s life (Fully & Varner, 2011; cited in Caleb, 2011). McPheters and Sandberg (2010) in their studies found that the quality of couple relations has a positive relationship with physical functions of

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion