Group psychotherapy experiences for people with multiple sclerosis and psychological support for families

In this article we describe our experience of group psychotherapy for patients afflicted with multiple sclerosis in the care of the Centre of Multiple Sclerosis of the Don Gnocchi Foundation in Milan, and an experience of psychological support to the patients' families. Multiple sclerosis, with its disability, chronic and unforeseeable features, brings about a series of changes in the patient's life. Considering the youthful age during which the disease arises, patients are obliged to review their own life plans in their family, social and working circles and have to face living with the chronicity and the loss of their own autonomy. Group psychotherapy was qualified as a preferred ambit to express and to share individual problems. The disease also involves the family: relatives must revise certains plans and projects made before. Psychological support could help relatives not only with the emotional load following on from the disease so that they do not feel alone in the patient's everyday care, but also with their own emotional management, in order to give them a listening space also for their distresses and fears.