• Posted January 23, 2025

Pregnancy Increases Mental Health Risk in MS Patients

Pregnancy increases the risk of mental illness among women with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Pregnant MS patients have a higher risk of mental illness both during gestation and in the first years after they give birth, researchers reported in a new study published Jan. 22 in the journal Neurology.

Overall, women with MS have a 26% increased risk of mental illness during pregnancy and a 33% increased risk after giving birth, compared to women without the degenerative nerve disease.

“Mental health struggles can affect both parents and kids, making it important to understand how mental health challenges around pregnancy affect people with MS,” lead researcher Dr. Ruth Ann Marrie, a professor of medicine and community health sciences at the University of Manitoba in Canada, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers tracked the health of nearly 900,000 mothers, including more than 1,700 with MS. They looked at records from two years before conception to three years after participants gave birth.

The research team then examined how many women had been diagnosed with a mental illness, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis, suicide attempts or substance abuse.

Mental illness affected about 42% of women with MS during pregnancy, and that increased to 50% within the first year after birth, results show.

By comparison, 30% of women without MS had mental health problems during pregnancy and 38% in the first year after birth.

Overall, 8% of people with MS were diagnosed with a new mental illness during pregnancy and 14% in the first year after birth, compared to 7% and 11% of women without MS.

The results also show that women with MS have an increased risk of all specific mental illnesses except suicide attempts.

Strikingly, researchers found that substance abuse increased from 0.5% during pregnancy to 6% after giving birth in people with MS.

This increased risk of mental illness could be due to the mental stress of pregnancy, hormone fluctuations and systemic changes that occur to a woman’s body during pregnancy, researchers said. For example, pregnant women can be more at risk for blood clots, insulin resistance and changes to their immune systems. 

“These findings emphasize the need for preventive and early treatment of mental illness,” Marrie concluded. “Future studies should look at how MS affects mental health in mothers during and after pregnancy and if it’s worse in different stages of MS. Doctors should know about these risks, make sure to check mental health, and provide treatment if needed.”

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on multiple sclerosis and mental health.

SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology, news release, Jan. 22, 2025