For decades, experts have been studying potential links between childhood epilepsy and various behavioral and psychiatric conditions and some have hypothesized that that they are part of a larger spectrum of brain disorders with shared mechanisms.
However, a new study of young adults has found no substantial or lasting association between childhood epilepsy and psychiatric disorders and suicidal behavior. The study included 257 young adults with childhood-onset epilepsy who were followed since the onset of their epilepsy approximately 15 years earlier and 134 sibling controls.
"To our knowledge, this is the first community-based study of childhood-onset epilepsy in which lifetime and current psychiatric disorders were assessed once children reached young adulthood," said Dr. Anne Berg, senior author of the Epilepsia study.