The Impact of Psychiatric Intervention on Patients with Uncontrolled Seizures

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Abstract
There is much evidence that emotional stress can trigger both neurogenic and hysterical seizures in susceptible patients. Patients [37] whose seizures appeared to be precipitated at times by emotional stress and were not controlled by anticonvulsant medication alone were studied. Approximately 70% of patients demonstrated substantial improvement in seizure control after psychiatric treatment and maintained this improvement during follow-up. Apparently patient characteristics associated with better prognosis include normal intelligence, partial (as opposed to generalized) neurogenic seizures, a diagnosis of hysterical seizures, a less severely abnormal EEG and being hypnotizable. After psychiatric treatment, 32% of patients had their anticonvulsant medication reduced and another 16% had it discontinued.

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