Background and Objective: MS is a chronic and destructive inflammatory diseasethat has negative effect on psychological condition, interpersonal, family and social relationship and in general, on psychological well-being. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between social support and psychological profile of ms patients.
Method: In this descriptive-correlation study, 120 MS patients have been selected by random sampling method among of those that admitted to the MS Society of shiraz. Data gathering was accomplished by two tests: Symptom CheckList-90- Revised (SCL-90-R) and Social Support Scale. Finally data were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient and T-test on SPSS-17 software and p-value less than 0.05 considered as significant.
Results: Results showed that 70.8% of MS patients had problems in somatic complaint and 69.1% in obsession, 63.3% in sensitivity, 73.3% in depression, 62.5% in anxiety, 54.1% in hostility, 66.6% in paranoid thoughts, 28.3% in phobia and 36.6% in psychosis. Correlations between social support with obsession, sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobia and paranoid thoughts were negatively significant.
Conclusion: The range of psychological problems experienced by MS patients is more extensive and these problems have significant relationship with social support. Thus, attention to different dimensions of psychological health is necessary and social support based interventions can be more effective.