Among epileptic patients, personality disorders may be associated with
specific seizure manifestations. In an epilepsy clinic, we identified 42
idiopathic epilepsy patients diagnosed with various DSM-III-R personality
disorders, including borderline, atypical or mixed, explosive, and
dependent. When compared with 42 age- and sex-matched epileptic control
subjects on six seizure variables, the personality disorder group had more
patients with epileptic auras (P = 0.001), particularly "cephalic" auras,
and fewer with secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures (P < 0.05).
These findings suggest that the experience of epileptic auras contributes
to the development of personality disorders, especially when auras are not
masked by secondarily generalized seizures.Abstract Teaser