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Shame, Embarrassment Regarding Walking Problems Can Isolate MS Patients
- February 18, 2026
- Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
A mom with multiple sclerosis (MS) struggled to keep her balance, frustrated by her frequent missteps and stumbles.
But what really hurt was her 6-year-old daughter’s reaction to her plight.
“My daughter told me to stop walking with them basically because it’s embarrassing when I fall,” the mother recounted in a study. “I mis-stepped, just kind of fell over. But she turned around and looked at me and went, 'Oh, mom, ah, it’s embarrassing. I don’t want you to walk us because it’s embarrassing when you fall.’ ”
The ravages of multiple sclerosis can make walking difficult for most people with the nervous system disorder.
But the emotions associated with these gait problems — shame, embarrassment and anxiety — add to MS patients’ distress, making getting out and about an utter misery, a new evidence review has found.
As a result, some MS patients become virtual shut-ins, researchers said.
“Because these barriers feel beyond their control, many people with MS described feeling increasingly disconnected, which can lead to withdrawal from community spaces,” lead researcher Emily Wood, a doctoral student at Murdoch University in Australia, said in a news release.
Walking problems affect as many as 80% of people with MS, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
The disease causes the immune system to attack a person’s nerve cells. This can affect their ability to coordinate movement, maintain balance or fight fatigue.
For the new study, researchers reviewed 90 studies involving more than 1,800 people with MS to gain an understanding of what day-to-day walking is like for them.
“Our goal was to center the voices of people living with MS and understand, in their own words, what it truly feels like for them to walk in their homes and communities,” Wood said.
The analysis found four key themes among people with MS.
First, their need to plan outings around the physical barriers associated with walking often caused them to either dread excursions or stop going out altogether.
“My favorite cafe, I used to like to go there. It’s not accessible that I can find,” one MS patient related. “It has three steps to get in, so we don’t go.”
Another patient also avoided outings.
“I felt very self-conscious about my barely walking and just ended up staying home,” the patient said. “I was very concerned about tripping, falling and then going someplace I hadn’t been before.”
MS patients also felt stigmatized due to their walking problems, with others staring or judging them.
One common symptom of MS is foot drop, in which the disease damages control over the muscles that flex the ankle, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. This can make it difficult for people to handle steps or uneven surfaces.
“I don’t like going out with this foot,” one patient said. “I don’t go out myself because everyone looks at us, and the strangers among them stare at us. I feel ashamed. For this reason, I don’t go out, and most of the time I am at home.
Frustration over their lost abilities and anxiety over falling also tended to isolate MS patients.
“I can’t do anything that I used to be able to do. I can’t play netball, I can’t play touch footy, I can’t walk in the dark,” one patient said. “You lose everything.”
Finally, patients said that family and friends largely mean well but can be unintentionally discouraging.
“My family, they think they support me, but they don’t because they think if they see me walking to town, which is like a mile up and a mile back, ‘Oh well then, she’s fine. You know, what is she talking about. She’s just making this stuff up,’” one patient said.
“My husband’s children, they would want to go hiking in the mountains or the hills or something and I can’t do that, you know,” another patient said. “I tire too easily. I’m gonna trip and fall, and that kind of makes you feel like the bad guy because you can’t keep up.”
These personal accounts highlight gaps in the system commonly used to track a person’s disabilities, called the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Wood said.
“By bringing together these lived experiences, we also wanted to examine whether the ICF framework genuinely reflects what people with MS encounter every day, and our findings suggest it doesn’t capture the full emotional and social burden,” she said.
Wood suggested the ICF system be complemented with patient reports that capture the emotional turmoil caused by MS-related walking problems.
“Although the ICF framework encompasses some emotional functions, its phrasing does not readily capture the sustained emotional burden that underpins the walking experience for people with MS,” she said.
The findings were recently published in the journal Disability and Rehabilitation.
More information
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has more on walking difficulties with MS.
SOURCE: Murdoch University, news release, Jan. 21, 2026
