Iris-Katharina Penner (editor) - Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis: Background, Clinic, Diagnostic, Therapy

Translation from the German language edition: Fatigue bei Multipler Sklerose Grundlagen Klinik Diagnostik Therapie, 2nd edition by Iris-Katharina Penner, Hippocampus Verlag 2021. Published by Hippocampus Verlag. All Rights Reserved.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.

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Fatigue in the context of multiple sclerosis is one of the most relevant neuropsychiatric symptoms of the disease and is considered one of the most distressing ones from the patient's perspective. Fatigue often occurs abruptly without any external reason in everyday life and thus complicates a normal daily functioning. Often, patients fatigue-associated behavior leads to stigmatization in the sense of "laziness attribution," "inability to work under pressure," or "simulating and exaggerating the symptoms." This lack of understanding in the social environment is increased by the fact that fatigue occurs independently of the degree of disability and thus also affects patients who do not appear to have any obvious disease symptoms. But especially the group of patients with a low degree of disability have been shown to feel fatigue forces them to reduce their workload or even to give up employment completely, consequently resulting in social isolation and depressive episodes.

This book is the first English edition following the recently published second German edition. It is dedicated to all those dealing with fatigue symptoms directly or indirectly in the context of multiple sclerosis. This includes various professional groups (e.g., doctors, psychologists, therapists, nurses a.o.) as well as the patients themselves and their relatives. The aim of the book is to present the latest scientific findings, from the basics to clinics and diagnostics to therapy, in order to increase our understanding of the whole spectrum of fatigue. To achieve this, renowned colleagues from the clinical and scientific communities have agreed to illuminate various aspects from their respective research and practice perspective. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank my esteemed colleagues for their support and enthusiasm in the endeavor to publish this English edition of the Fatigue book.