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Study of personality and psychopathology in patients with epilepsy

Background

Psychiatric comorbidity and psychopathology have been widely assessed in patient with epilepsy. However, the issue of whether people with epilepsy are at increased risk for psychological problems is remines highly controversial. These psychological and personality profile are not evaluated in a systematic manner in patient with epilepsy in Iran. The aim of this study was to evaluate personality characters and psychopathology in this patient and compare with those of non-patient.

Materials and methods

In this study we investigated personality and psychological characters in 40 patients with epilepsy that randomly selected from Neurology Clinic. Control group was matched in accordance with age, gender, marital status, and job. Tow group was assessed by MMPI (Iranian form).

Results

The analysis of MMPI profile of two groups revealed that patient with epilepsy have more elevation on some of MMPI scales than those of control group such as D, HY, Pt and Se. But there was not significant deffrences except Sc scale (p < 0.05).

Discussion

Psychological interpretation on patient MMPI profile indicated that they tend to be more neurotic and introversive than control group. The significant higher score on Schizophrenia scale in epileptic patient should not interfere as schizophrenia illness but it indicate on existence of characters such as to be social withdrawal and reveal conceptual disturtion, confusion, agitation, restless and nervousness. These results provide information about patients with epilepsy that may be useful in their mental health.

References

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Ebrahimi, A., Kajbaf, M. & Shirzadi, M. Study of personality and psychopathology in patients with epilepsy. Ann Gen Psychiatry 5 (Suppl 1), S110 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-5-S1-S110

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-5-S1-S110

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