Epileptic psychosis: A case report

Abstract

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder and frequently observed with psychiatric disorders. Epileptic people seem particularly liable to certain major psychiatric disorders. Even though epilepsy may be a risk factor for the development of the schizophrenia, it is clear that the majority of those with epilepsy do not become psychotic. Most forms of epileptic psychosis occur commonly in the partial epilepsies. Clinical presentation of epileptic psychosis can vary from paranoid hallucinatory states to anxiety and conversion phenomena, and that it may occur in both generalized and focal epilepsies. Incidence of schizophrenia-like psychosis especially increases in temporal lobe epilepsy. An antagonistic relationship is described between psychosis and seizures in some patients. Both electrical and pharmacologic kindling have been used in attempts to develop models of the antagonism between epilepsy and psychosis. A possible hypothetical relationship between psychosis and epilepsy regarding the mesolimbic dopaminergic system and kindling of this system with epileptic discharge in temporolimbic circuits could induce a florid psychotic state in some patients. The case is about the patient who mostly was referred to the hospital as catatonic psychosis, and was treated after having a seizure spontaneously.

Keywords

• Epileptic psychosis
• Forced normalization
• Psychosis
• Temporal lobe epilepsy

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