Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease, which leads to an increased risk for development of emotional and mental disorders and increased suicide risk. Many studies have shown that MS-patient have increased risk of depression, mania, anxiety and psychosis.

To carry out register-based studies and clinical study in order to clarify the requency of MS patients who received psychiatric diagnoses compared with the background population.

The aim of this project is being able to use the results from our register investigation together with the clinical findings to design a clinical guideline for the screening of psychiatric disorder in the diagnosis of MS.

The project consist of 2 parts:

1. A register-based cohort study with interconnection of The Danish Psychiatric Central register, the Danish Scleroseregrister, and Register of Medicinal Product Statistics from State Serum Institute. Statistics Denmark will perform the register interconnection. The cohort is a group of patient diagnosed with MS in the period from 1.January 1999- 1. January 2009. They will be investigated for psychiatric comorbidity before and after diagnosis of MS, compared to the background population.

2. Clinical study: The clinical examination includes screening of 75 MS patients from the Sclerosis Cl inic of Southern Denmark. The screenings instruments are Beck Depression Intervention and The hospital depression and anxiety scale (HADS scale.). The MS patients we found under screening with high risk of psychiatric comorbidity will be invited to a more detailed clinical interview using the diagnostics tool: Present State Examination (PSE) for depression and anxiety.