Mental Health Episodes

In addition to its physical symptoms, MS can also affect your emotional well-being. Depression, persistent anxiety, and extreme irritability are common. And, just like the physical symptoms of MS, they require treatment. But people living with MS tend to focus on their physical health and, too often, end up neglecting their mental health. Dr. Dawn Ehde joins me to talk about maintaining and strengthening your emotional well-being when you're living with MS, and she'll introduce you to a new res...

More than half of the people living with MS report significant disruptions in their sleep and difficulty maintaining a consistent sleep schedule. Sleep-related problems can lead to additional health issues, not to mention an overall decline in quality of life and well-being. The Director of the Sleep, Health, and Wellness Lab at the University of Kansas Medical Center Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, Dr. Katie Siengsukon, returns to the podcast to talk about how sleep ...

Everybody remembers the day -- sometimes, even the moment -- when they were diagnosed with MS. And in that moment, you may not have known very much about living with MS, but you probably felt like everything was about to change. One of the most common emotional responses to MS is grief. Joining me to talk about the relationship between grief and MS, as well as share some specific steps and strategies that you can take to process and manage grief in a healthy way is clinical psychologist Dr. Ros...

If you're living with MS, there's a good chance that, at some point, you're going to deal with depression, cognitive issues, or both of these common MS symptoms. We're taking a deep dive into how these symptoms can impact your everyday life at home and at work with the author of Mind, Mood, and Memory: The Neurobehavioral Consequences of Multiple Sclerosis, Dr. Anthony Feinstein. We're also highlighting some of the MS research that was presented two weeks ago at the ACTRIMS Forum, the annual m...

Many of our local, state, and national leaders seem to be declaring that the pandemic has ended and it's back to business as usual. But if you're living with MS, how comfortable are you with the idea of being out in a world where everyone isn't fully vaccinated, and mask mandates have been cancelled? Dr. Meghan Beier and Emily Reilly join me to discuss how to manage your fear and anxiety, build resilience, and deal with the emotional impact of living life in a world where COVID-19 is considered...

With hospital rates starting to decline and mask mandates being lifted in several states there seems to be a general sense that we're seeing COVID-19 becoming an endemic virus. And we have to wonder what that means for people living with MS. Dr. Nancy Sicotte joins me to talk about the preventative treatments for COVID-19 that are available today for people who are living with MS, the importance of receiving 4 doses of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines if you're living with MS, and some of the things ...

This special episode of RealTalk MS is sponsored by EMD Serono and MS in the 21st Century. Cognitive impairment affects more than 50% of the people living with MS. In this special episode of RealTalk MS, we're talking with Dr. Sarah Morrow and Paola Kruger about how people living with MS can work together with their healthcare providers to develop a constructive dialogue about cognition and MS. Dr. Sarah Morrow is an Associate Professor of Neurology in the Department of Clinical Neurological S...

The 2021 holiday season is underway, and the availability of the COVID-19 vaccines means that this year, many of us are getting caught up in cooking, eating, drinking, shopping, and connecting face-to-face with family and friends. For some of us, it also means having that important but sometimes-awkward conversation about vaccine status. For too many people, 'tis the season....to feel stressed. Stress can feel overwhelming and make everyday life challenging for anyone, but it can be especially ...

Tamara Kaye Sellman is a poet, short story writer, journalist, and essayist. So, when she was diagnosed with MS in 2013, Tamara did what she does best -- she began writing about it. That writing turned into Intention Tremor, a book of poetry and prose written over the five years following Tamara's diagnosis. In this special episode, we'll talk with Tamara about how she chose to artistically interpret being diagnosed with MS. We'll discuss why she's quite literally invested in MS research. And T...

The annual health insurance open enrollment period has begun! And a lot of people tend to get through open enrollment on autopilot, assuming that the health insurance that they had last year will continue to serve them well next year. But policies change. Physician networks change. And prescription drug formularies change. If you're living with MS, you can't afford to be on autopilot when it comes to making health insurance decisions. Those decisions can cost you -- in time, money, and unnecessa...