Antiepileptic Drugs and Mental Health Status of Patients with Epilepsy

Many patients with epilepsy suffer also from coexisting psychological problems. These mental co-morbidities have a significant impact on quality of life of patients with epilepsy. Recent studies have shown that although antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) treat epilepsy, they may increase risk of mental disorders in these patients . Due to the lack of adequate research in this area, we assessed psychiatric disorders in patients with idiopathic tonic-clonic seizure who were treated with antiepileptic drugs . This descriptive-cross-sectional research was conducted on 170 patients with tonic-clonic seizure using the SCL-90-R questionnaire and the results were analyzed by descriptive statistics, T test and chi-square test . The prevalence of psychiatric disorders in patients was 38.8%. All antiepileptic drugs were associated with different kind of mental disorders but there wasn’t any relationship between mental disorders and any type of antiepileptic drug except psychosis that was significantly lower in sodium valproate consumers ( p ? 0.001). Our findings show that a subgroup of epileptic patients is generally prone to develop mental disorders during antiepileptic therapy, despite different pharmacological properties of the AEDs. Negative psychotropic effects of AEDs should be considered in treatment of patients with epilepsy.