Conduct disorders in epileptic children.

The management of epileptic children has greatly improved during the last 10 years with new methods of investigation, new anticonvulsant drugs, and sometimes neurosurgical procedures, but conduct disorders encountered in epileptic children remain a most intractable problem. In spite of popular beliefs only a small proportion of epileptic children have severe disorders of this type. Henderson (1953) found that about 12% of a random sample of school-age epileptics were emotionally disturbed and badly behaved. Bridge (1949) found only 9% of severe disorders in his large clinic material though one-third were mildly disturbed. As in the case of adult epileptics, the favoured aetiological theories blame either physiological factors (leading to such concepts as the epileptic personality) or environmental factors such as parental mishandling. Pond (1952) considered that in fact both environmental and physiological factors had to be taken into account. The object of this study was to investigate factors associated with conduct disorders in epileptic children and to compare them with conduct disorders in non-epileptic children.