Quality of Life and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Poor quality of life (QoL) is common in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, but its impact on cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERSs) has not yet been extensively investigated. We studied the association between QoL and CERSs in MS patients with taking account socio-demographic variables. Individuals with MS (n = 198, 76.3% female) reported their QoL and CERSs status using the SF-36 and CERQ-36 questionnaires, respectively. Data on socio-demographic variables were also obtained. Univariate tests and bivariate correlation and regression analysis were used to investigate the association between variables and groups. A significant positive correlation was observed between mental QoL with body mass index as well as MBI and self-blame, ruminations, and catastrophizing. Also significant negative correlation was revealed between physical QoL with rumination, other-blame and disease duration. However, regression analysis showed a significant negative association between PCS with catastrophizing, rumination, self-blame, and other-blame. A strong negative correlation was observed between age with catastrophizing and acceptance variables. The female group reported higher score for all CERSs indices but lower score for QoL component than male group. MS patients have troubles with emotion regulation strategies and QoL. These problems may be related to their physical, and physiological characteristics. The results can be applied by physicians, politicians and health policy makers in the health systems and during the treatment process to plan for the improvement of MS patients' well-being. In general, the difference in psychological and the socio-demographic variables between patients have significantly affected QoL that should be studied in more detail in future studies.