Psychopathology in people with epilepsy and intellectual disabilities

Abstract

Psychopathology refers to the manifestation of behaviors or experiences that may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment. The term is broad, encompassing all phenomena that might, but might not, reach significance for a psychiatric diagnosis. As a result, the debate about the occurrence of psychopathology in people with epilepsy has been long and intense. If behavior is the manifest aspect of psychic life, then aberrations of behavior are usually attributed to some form of abnormal mental state 1; there can be no doubt that this is a significant issue in people with epilepsy. There is further difficulty in interpreting psychopathology or behavioral disorders in people with intellectual disabilities (ID), particularly in people with severe ID. How, then, do we understand the issues surrounding psychopathology in people with ID and epilepsy? In this chapter we will seek to look at these issues in more detail, describing findings in people with ID without epilepsy, in the general population with epilepsy, and then, where possible, looking for ID-specific research in the field of epilepsy. © 2008 Springer-Verlag London.