Psychiatria pre prax 4/2014

Case report interictal psychosis in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and mesial temporal sclerosis

Psychotic disorders in patients with epilepsy are often overlooked and consequently mistreated. The aim of this paper is to bring some recent theoretical knowledge about the problems of psychosis in epilepsy. We focused mainly on chronic interictal psychosis, which resembles the clinical picture of schizophrenia. In the second part we present a case report of a 57-year-old woman treated for long--term temporal lobe epilepsy, which has been repeatedly hospitalized in our hospital because of interictal psychosis. MRI of the brain confirmed mesial temporal sclerosis. Current neuropathological findings suggest that hippocampal sclerosis (particularly left-side) could be a structural base of psychiatric symptoms in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Keywords: epilepsy, interictal psychosis, temporal lobe epilepsy, hippocampus, mesial temporal sclerosis.