Abstracts

RATIONALE: Findings regarding the "epileptic personality" are still controverse. Psychiatric standard scales often do not reflect the aimed behavioural problems and personality features of patients with epilepsy. Therefore, a questionnaire was constructed to assess mood and behavioural disorders in primary "non-psychiatric" patients with circumscribed cerebral lesions and dysfunctions. METHODS: A self rating questionnaire with 82 confrontative questions regarding frequencies of behaviour ocurrence in 15 clinically relevant domains was administered to 85 patients with focal epilepsies (59 temporal,17 frontal, 9 parietal)and 44 age sex matched control subjects. In addition, depression and anxiety were assessed with the BDI and the SAS. RESULTS: factor analysis resulted in 6 scales : 1) attention/impulse control 2) addiction/obsession 3) mood 4)social/communicative competence 5) aggression/learning disability 6) hyperactivity. The mood scale showed satisfactory correlations with the BDI and SAS. Separate MANOVA for localization, lateralization, sex, and pathology indicated reduced attention/impuls control and aggression in left epilepsies, increased addiction/obsession in right epilepsies, and reduced social competence in either epilepsy group. Attention/Impulse control deficits were observed in temporal and frontal epilepsy, addiction/obsession and hyperactivity were increased in frontal lobe epilepsy and parietal epilepsies showed the poorest social competence. Women had greater problems with attention/impulse control than men. Patients with mesial sclerosis showed greater mood problems. The respective results, however, became significant only in comparison with the control sample. CONCLUSIONS: The results obtained with the CPS are promising. They indicate specific behavioural problems and personality disorders with lateralized and localized epilepsies. Recruitment of greater norm groups and further validation is in progress and hopefully results in a useful tool to assess behavioral and personality disorders in patients with cerebral lesions and dysfunctions as it is the case with focal epilepsies.