Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common demyelinating disease of the central nervous system and one that presents more neuropsychiatric manifestations.

The authors of this paper proposes to characterize psychological and psychopathologically a group of patients sent from Neurology to Psychiatry at St. João Hospital - Porto.

The initial group consisted of 48 patients (35 women and 13 men). Data collection was done through a semi-formant interview to obtain socio-demographic and clinical data. The psychological and psychopathological evaluation was made with the following tools: MMSE (Mini Mental State Examination), Raven, MOS SF-36 (Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form Health Survey), SCL-90 (Hopkins Symptoms Distress Checklist 90), HADS (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), scale and EDSS (Expanded Disability Status Scale).

On this sample the median duration of disease was 11 years and the value of EDSS has an average of 2.49. The sample does not show significant levels of psychopathology. However the results suggest that the worse is the overall severity of MS (EDSS) and the greater the duration of illness, the worst seems to be general physical and emotional functioning. In this study, no associations were found between variables of MS and psychopathological findings. However cognitive dysfunction appears to worsen with the greatest severity of MS, as in other works.