A comparative study of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder prevalencein epilepsy patients and psychogenic nonepileptic seizure patients

Purpose: This study tests the hypothesis that trauma histories, including h istories of physical and sexual abuse, and posttraumatic stress disorder (P TSD) are more prevalent in psychogenic non-epileptic seizure (NES) patients than in epilepsy patients. Methods: Thirty-five inpatients with intractable seizures were evaluated fu r trauma history and PTSD. After these assessments, patients were diagnosed as having either epileptic or nonepileptic seizures through EEG monitoring . Results: NES diagnosis correlated with PTSD and total number of lifetime tr aumas, adult traumas, and abuse traumas. Contrary to previous hypotheses, r eported childhood sexual abuse (CSA) did not correlate significantly with N ES diagnosis. However, CSA predicted PTSD in a discriminant analysis. Conclusions: We found evidence for the hypothesized relations between traum a, abuse, PTSD, and NES diagnosis. However, elevated levels in both seizure -disorder groups suggest that routine assessment for abuse, trauma, and PTS D might facilitate medical cars and treatment for all intractable seizure p atients.