Psychopathology in adolescents with TLE and FLE.

BACKGROUND: To describe the rates and types of psychiatric disorders among adolescents with chronic symptomatic epilepsies and to evaluate syndrome-specific differences between temporal lobe (TLE) and frontal lobe (FLE) epilepsies.

METHODS: A cross-sectional single-center study design applying the Youth Self Report (YSR) to investigate psychopathological symptoms and the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI) to investigate personality dimensions was used. Consecutive adolescents between 14 and 18 years of age with drug-resistant symptomatic TLE and FLE were investigated during pre-surgical evaluation prior to epilepsy surgery. Data from twenty-eight patients (19 with TLE and 9 with FLE) were analyzed for this report.

RESULTS: Compared with the test norm, higher prevalence rates and a wider range of psychopathological symptoms were seen in patients with TLE. This result was not seen in patients with FLE. Concerning personality dimensions, significantly higher values of repressive defensiveness and significantly lower values of positive emotion and confidence were found in patients with TLE. In contrast, significantly lower levels of distress and significantly higher levels of repressive defensiveness and denial of distress were seen in patients with FLE. Comparing TLE with FLE, a significantly higher mean score for distress, and a significantly lower mean score for positive emotion and denial of distress were found in patients with TLE.

CONCLUSION: In summary, psychiatric comorbidity was frequently found in this sample of youths with chronic drug-resistant localization-related epilepsies. Although results have to be interpreted with caution because of the small sample size, psychiatric symptomatology was significantly different between TLE and FLE. Our results show that continuous and syndrome-specific psychiatric monitoring is essential in young patients with epilepsy.