P158: Epilepsy and Anxiety: A Brief Review

Epilepsy is a brain disorder that causes people to have recurring seizures. The seizures happen when clusters of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain send out the wrong signals. Up to 50 or 60% of patients with chronic epilepsy have various mood disorders including depression and anxiety. Although the affective and cognitive effects of epilepsy have long received attention, the anxiety spectrum of psychiatric complications of epilepsy has not been well-studied. Anxiety is a general term for several disorders that cause nervousness, fear, apprehension and worrying. These disorders affect how we feel and behave, and they can manifest real physical symptoms. The goal of this investigation was to review the different views about the relationship between anxiety and epilepsy. We performed a systematic literature search, using PubMed with the following entry: "Epilepsy"[Mesh] AND "Anxiety"[Mesh]. The search resulted in identifying 580 studies. Full texts of articles which met the inclusion criteria and their finding are discussed in this study. Increased recognition of anxiety disorders among patients with epilepsy, offers a potentially rich nexus for theoretical and empiric investigation of the neurocircuitry and psychological mechanisms underlying each phenomenon.