title: Psychopathology in adolescents with TLE and FLE.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To describe the rates and types of psychiatric disorders among adolescents with chronic symptomatic epilepsies and to evaluate syndrome-specific differences between temporal lobe (TLE) and frontal lobe (FLE) epilepsies.
  
  
  METHODS
  A cross-sectional single-center study design applying the Youth Self Report (YSR) to investigate psychopathological symptoms and the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI) to investigate personality dimensions was used. Consecutive adolescents between 14 and 18 years of age with drug-resistant symptomatic TLE and FLE were investigated during pre-surgical evaluation prior to epilepsy surgery. Data from twenty-eight patients (19 with TLE and 9 with FLE) were analyzed for this report.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Compared with the test norm, higher prevalence rates and a wider range of psychopathological symptoms were seen in patients with TLE. This result was not seen in patients with FLE. Concerning personality dimensions, significantly higher values of repressive defensiveness and significantly lower values of positive emotion and confidence were found in patients with TLE. In contrast, significantly lower levels of distress and significantly higher levels of repressive defensiveness and denial of distress were seen in patients with FLE. Comparing TLE with FLE, a significantly higher mean score for distress, and a significantly lower mean score for positive emotion and denial of distress were found in patients with TLE.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In summary, psychiatric comorbidity was frequently found in this sample of youths with chronic drug-resistant localization-related epilepsies. Although results have to be interpreted with caution because of the small sample size, psychiatric symptomatology was significantly different between TLE and FLE. Our results show that continuous and syndrome-specific psychiatric monitoring is essential in young patients with epilepsy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna (MUW), Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huemer
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Paracelsus Private Medical University, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Belinda
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Plattner
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Division of General Pediatrics, MUW, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Nadja
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Planer
authors.affiliation: Stanford University School of Medicine, Division of Child Psychiatry and Child Development, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, United States.
authors.forename: Hans
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Steiner
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Division of General Pediatrics, MUW, Vienna, Austria. Electronic address: martha.feucht@meduniwien.ac.at.
authors.forename: Martha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Feucht
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D000069279:Drug Resistant Epilepsy / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology / Q000601:surgery; D004644:Emotions; D017034:Epilepsy, Frontal Lobe / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology / Q000601:surgery; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000523:psychology; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010556:Personality Tests; D057566:Self Report
keywords: Adolescents; Epilepsy; FLE; Personality; Psychopathology; TLE