Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. Depression and anxiety are very common among people with MS. Both are associated with a reduced quality of life. Despite the understanding that mental health conditions are more common in MS than in the general population, their impact on MS is not well understood. One way of measuring MS progression is to assess a person's ability to walk. Studies from the general population of older adults have found that depression is associated with difficulties in walking. Based on these findings, we think that having a mental health condition could be associated with a faster MS progression. We will explore this relationship by studying a large sample of people with MS from multiple Canadian MS clinics. By linking this clinical data with other physician, hospital and prescription data from thousands of patients collected over 20 years by neurologists, physicians and pharmacists, we can examine the relationship between having a mental health condition and disability progression over time. Ultimately, we hope that this information could be used to develop novel means of minimizing MS progression through better treatment of mental health conditions in those who have MS.