- Epilepsy and personality changes - dementia inevitable?
- Manifestations of the disease
What is epilepsy
Epilepsy - is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent seizures and often personality changes. Epilepsy can be caused by various reasons, but most often it is congenital or hereditary features of the structure of the brain combined with his organic lesion (birth trauma, tumors, infections, and so on).
Seizure occurs during the propagation of very strong nerve impulses from the source of epileptic activity in the brain of the entire brain (generalized seizures or shared), or part of it (partial or partial seizure).
Generalized seizures (large seizures) are characterized by loss of consciousness, seizures (clonic first, that is short, then tonic - long), dilated pupils, palpitations. At this point, patients fall and can get a significant injury.
There are small generalized seizures, which are accompanied by only turning off of consciousness without convulsions: the patients just on time (sometimes a few seconds) "off", and then continue their actions, as if nothing had happened. Sometimes such patients are not aware of their seizures.
If the nervous excitement is not transmitted to the entire brain, and part of it, then there are partial or focal seizures in the form of certain movements, short-term memory disorders
Memory Disorders - aggravation as dangerous as the weakening
, Bouts of obsessive thoughts and so on. This partial seizures can always go to the generalized.
Epilepsy occurs in different ways, depending on the cause of its occurrence. But often, the disease is a constant deterioration: the frequency of attacks is increasing, growing personality changes.
Personality changes in epilepsy
The degree of personality change in epilepsy depends on the age at which the onset of the disease, the frequency and features of seizures, as well as treatment. The earlier onset of the disease, the more often the seizures occur and the less active a patient is treated, the sooner come personality change, particularly dementia. Personality changes epileptic amplified in the presence of his alcoholism, traumatic brain injury and disease of the brain (cerebral atherosclerosis, stroke
Stroke - a serious brain injury
and so on).
The personality change in epilepsy manifested by irritability
Irritability - you try to control my temper
, Frustration, impatience, foolishness, resentment, petty fault-finding with a penchant for brutality, strife, outbursts of anger and even rage, often accompanied by aggressive actions.
Along with this, epilepsy and found exactly the opposite properties: shyness, fearfulness, propensity for self-abasement, exaggerated courtesy, reaching to flattery and servility, exaggerated veniality and gentle handling, the desire to emphasize their agreement with the person and to please him. These completely opposite behaviors can occur in the same patient, both in pure form and in various combinations.
The mood of patients with epilepsy are usually expressed very clearly and is subject to frequent fluctuations - from sullen irritability to deliberately careless or just more excited. Mood swings occur in epilepsy either alone (spontaneous oscillations), and under the influence of everyday events and experiences.
All kinds of excitement (affect) in epilepsy have a feature: once established, they do not change for a long time, despite the change in circumstances (viscosity affect). This is not peculiar to such affects, as irritability, hostility, resentment, but also the opposite (joy, compassion location).
Intellectual ability of patients with epilepsy
Epilepsy - a sacred disease
also changed: they then complain of lethargy, inability to concentrate, you become able to do the work, which until recently seemed impossible to them.
Thinking of patients with epilepsy have a number of features which appear in the speech. The most characteristic jam in the details, the inability to identify the main difficulty of the transition from one representation to another, and therefore, patients are very difficult to express their thoughts. Their speech is poor in words, always accompanied by a return to what has been said, is replete with ornate trite expressions.
All these properties of the person allowed to formulate the basic quality of mental patients with epilepsy - viscosity. A clear manifestation of personality changes, accompanied by various changes in the depth of memory, indicates the presence of epileptic dementia. Against this background, can occur in patients with various mental disorders in the form of stupefaction, hallucinations, epileptic delusional psychosis and so on.
In order to prevent or, where possible, to postpone the development of personality change in epilepsy, these patients should be constantly observed by a psychiatrist and receive adequate treatment.
Galina Romanenko
