DEPRESSION IN SECONDARY EPILEPSY - RELATION TO LESION LATERALITY

Patients with epilepsy often have depressive disorders. This associati on may be particularly prominent in secondary epilepsy from a left hem isphere lesion. Among 1611 outpatients with epilepsy 272 patients were identified whose seizures originated from a structural brain lesion o ther than mesial temporal sclerosis. Sustained depressive disorders ha d occurred in 25 (9%) of these patients with secondary epilepsy. The d epressed patients were compared with the remaining patients without de pression with regard to location of lesion laterality and seizure vari ables. The only group difference was unilateral left hemisphere lesion s in 58% of the patients with depression compared with only 21% of the non-depressed patients (chi(2) = 10.4, p = 0.006). This finding suppo rts the idea of a relation of depression with epileptogenic lesions in the left hemisphere