pathological laughing and crying vs. emotive incontinence

    
      Re: pathological laughing and crying vs. emotive incontinence
    


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Posted by CCF Neurology MD on September 20, 1997 at 21:12:33:

In Reply to: pathological laughing and crying vs. emotive incontinence posted by sharon brown on September 16, 1997 at 13:46:31:

: The latest archives of neurology post a study on plc, but I am still not clear on the differences between the two, and what the appropriate treatment is.
  I seem to be experiencing both, i.e. crying with no stimuli and inappropriate crying with stimuli.
  Given that depression is often a symptom as much as a result of M.S. what possible solutions are there to these problems?
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Dear Sharon:
Neuropsychologists do tend to differentiate between PLC (pathological laughter and crying) and emotional incontinence, and emotional lability. The last is clearly different in that there is lability (wide fluctuation) of both SUBJECTIVE ("felt") and OBJECTIVE ("seen") emotion, i.e. the patient's mood is actually commensurate with the expressed signs of emotion. PLC implies (inappropriate) spontaneous laughter or crying in the absence of any appropriate SUBJECTIVE ("felt") emotion. Emotional incontinence means OBJECTIVE expression of emotion out of proportion to, but appropriate to, normal fluctuation of SUBJECTIVE emotion. I do not think PLC and emotional incontinence are very different.
The study in the latest issue of the Archives of N that you mention is indeed an interesting one; specifically, it finds that depression or other psychiatric disturbance is no more frequent in patients with MS and PLC than in other MS patients.
Please refer to my answer to your previous question for possible solutions to your problem.
Good luck!