Psychiatric Assessment in Patients with Mild Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
2019
Objectives. The findings of previous studies focused on personality disorders in epileptic patients are difficult to interpret due to nonhomogeneous samples and noncomparable methods. Here, we aimed at studying the personality profile in patients with mild temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) with psychiatric comorbidity. Materials and Methods. Thirty-five patients with mTLE (22 males, mean age ) underwent awake and sleep EEG, 3T brain MRI, and an extensive standardized diagnostic neuropsychiatric battery:
Temperamentand
Character Inventory-Revised (TCI-R),
Beck Depression Inventory-2, and
State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Drug history was collected in detail. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis was performed on TCI-R data, while all other clinical and psychological variables were compared across the resulting clusters. Results. Scores of
Harm Avoidance(HA),
Reward Dependence(RD), Persistence (P), Cooperativeness (C), and
Self-Transcendence(ST) allowed the identification of two clusters, describing different personality subtypes. Cluster 1 was characterized by an early onset, more severe anxiety traits, and
combined drugtherapy (antiepileptic drug and Benzodiazepine/Selective
Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) compared to Cluster 2. Conclusions. Our findings suggest that different personality traits may play a role in determining the clinical outcome in patients with mTLE. Specifically, lower scores of HA, RD, P, C, and ST were associated with worse clinical outcome. Thus, personality assessment could serve as an early indicator of greater disease severity, improving the management of mTLE.
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