Jte. Richardson, MEMORY IMPAIRMENT IN MULTIPLE-SCLEROSIS - REPORTS OF PATIENTS AND RELATIVES, British journal of clinical psychology, 35, 1996, pp. 205-219
This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey on problems i
n everyday memory that involved 115 community-based patients with mult
iple sclerosis (MS) and their carers or close relatives. Cluster analy
ses of their responses enabled the patients to be classified as either
'impaired' or 'unimpaired', though the salient items differed between
the reports of the patients and the relatives. Both the self-reports
and the relatives' reports indicated that roughly 10 per cent of the p
atients were impaired, a much lower estimate than that which was previ
ously suggested based upon psychometric testing. It is concluded that
neuropsychological assessment may underestimate the capacity of MS pat
ients in their daily activities.