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Mood Disorders
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Patients with fibromyalgia are more likely than those without the illness to suffer from psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. Major depression affects one in five FMS patients at any given time and half of all patients at some point in their lifetime.
Considerable controversy surrounds the relationship between these psychiatric conditions and the physical conditions and symptoms that fibromyalgia patients experience. Some believe that fibromyalgia is primarily a psychiatric disorder and that the related physical symptoms are the result of emotional stressors, whereas others believe that psychiatric problems largely occur as a result of the chronic pain, fatigue and disability that fibromyalgia patients experience.
This debate becomes less relevant if the psychiatric disturbances are considered in the same light as the physical symptoms; i.e., that a common biological mechanism is responsible for both the physical and psychiatric symptoms common among patients with fibromyalgia.
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