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Comparison of Psychotic States in Patients with Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Author(s) -
Sengoku Akira,
Toichi Motomi,
Murai Toshiya
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
epilepsia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.687
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1528-1167
pISSN - 0013-9580
DOI - 10.1111/j.1528-1157.1997.tb00101.x
Subject(s) - epilepsy , idiopathic generalized epilepsy , temporal lobe , psychology , psychosis , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , psychiatry , pediatrics , medicine
Summary: We compared the characteristics of psychotic symptoms and pathogeneses of psychotic states in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Sixty‐seven patients with IGE and 105 patients with TLE who were treated in our psychiatric clinic between December 1991 and July 1996 were selected. The clinical characteristics of the psychotic states accompanying each type of epilepsy were investigated retrospectively. Psychotic states were ascertained in 19.4% of the patients with IGE and 15.2% of the patients with TLE. The psychotic states of the patients with TLE tended to be more chronic than those of the patients with IGE. The characteristic psychotic symptoms were perplexed behavior and other various psychotic symptoms in the IGE group and hallucinations, delusions, and bad temper in the TLE group. The correlation with seizures was more evident in the TLE group than in the IGE group, because the seizure frequencies before the onset of psychotic states were significantly higher in the TLE group. The relationship between epileptic discharges and psychotic state was significantly more distinct in the IGE group. However, 3 patients with TLE with episodic psychotic states were mentally improved after tem‐prod lobectomy, which suggested that deep midtemporal epileptic discharges might have been the cause of their psychotic states. The psychotic symptoms of the patients with IGE and those with TLE were clearly different, and the incessant epileptic discharges of the different cerebral regions might be a key factor in the psychotic states accompanying both types of epilepsy.