Behavioral disorders in Japanese epileptic children.

Psychiatric problems have been discussed concerning epileptic children and they are still controversial as to whether it is characteristic to epilepsy or not. We analyzed the behavioral problems both in the normally developed children with epilepsy and the normal control group with the same behavioral score and then investigated the differences between epileptic children with normal development and those with retardation. The study disclosed that the epileptic children had problems in almost all fields such as emotional disturbances, daily life activity and human relationship and these were associated with the development and control of seizures. The retarded children had the disorders more frequently than the normally developed epileptic children.