I have been thinking about it for a long time and finely putting this in writing. We do know that genetic predisposition to mental diseases is related to problems with various ions conduction and abnormal neuron excitation or lack thereof. We do know that mental diseases can have EEG abnormalities. We do know that temporal lobe epilepsy can closely mimic and can be misdiagnosed as mental illness. What if some mental diseases are super narrow forms of epilepsy activating or disabling specific brain regions. Ie: limbic system for depression/mania, amygdala for borderline/rage, etc.
Furthermore, this can extend to other brain diseases. for example, what if migraine is localized seizure activating pain networks only?
if you search, people with seizures were frequently diagnosed with mental diseases before the episodes of generalized seizures.
I found this is a good read and a poster by name of 3Hours2Live well articulates my own doubts about current psychiatry practice: http://www.epilepsy....-mental-illness
Epilepsy may be the cause of almost any symptom that matches any symptom of any mental disorder.
The "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-IV, soon to be DSM-V), by the American Psychiatric Association (1994, 2000, 2013), lists a standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders by the matching of a required number of symptoms of each labeled mental disorder. When the patient has the required number of matching symptoms, the patient is labeled as having that disorder. The DSM-IV is often called "The Bible" of Psychiatry. The DSM-IV has safe-guards built in so very stupid decisions with patient labeling will be prevented, but the safe-guards don't work very well.
Psychological Testing is also frequently used to detect or measure symptoms of mental disorders. The testing usually uses the phrase "personality disorders" for the parts of "mental disorders." The Psychological Assessment test I have the most experience with from University studies is the "Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory" (MMPI). The full MMPI, now the MMPI-2, presently has 567 questions, with "yes" or "no" like responses to statements like "I almost never lose self-control," "The people I work with are not sympathetic with my problem," "I am afraid of losing my mind," etc. A previous version of the MMPI had a famously controversial question similiar to "I like red sports cars," which was used as a "weight point" towards labeling paranoia and schizophrenia.
The MMPI uses a "cookbook" to construct "standardized" interpretation reports that read like best-guess short-stories about the patient, based on the MMPI Validity and Clinical Scales (many other scales are often somewhat whimsically constructed for any special purpose at hand, such as the now popular Content Scales). Since the MMPI is so long, many shortened versions have been developed, and some hotly contested, since the shortened MMPI's are used for everything from hiring, parole, child custody, civil commitment, etc. Most other Psych Test are based upon, or imitates, the MMPI for statistical validation and objectivity determinations. Epilepsy, especially Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), easily "fools" the MMPI (and hence, all tests similar, imitative, or statistically pooled with the MMPI).
Since the MMPI was constructed by Psychiatrists using their original diagnoses used to construct the questions and scales, the methods the Psychiatrists' use in making the original diagnoses probably suffer with the same flaws that allows epilepsy to "fool" them also into making erroneous diagnoses (i.e., if I design a test that delivers results that match my prejudices, the test's prejudices probably also reveal many of my prejudices).
TLE often "fools" the MMPI to return the "cookbook" results of strong paranoid schizophrenia, strong manic-depressive disorder (now labeled Bipolar disorder), major depression, and many high to moderate levels of other disorders. While many of these false results are recognized as being false, great controversy is involved with some of them, and whether the symptoms used in DSM's "bipolar," "depression," "somatization," etc. are the same, or only vaguely similar, to not even close, to being the psychological symptoms from the epilepsy, but definitely incorrectly labeled (paranoia and schizophrenia are usually easily rejected as being erroneous resultingly labeled, but not always if any other prejudices are also present).
While DSM labels are only based on carelessly determined symptoms, symptoms with epilepsy often have an identifiable cause which can be identified often with great validity and objectivity with EEGs, MRIs, surgeries, etc. Still, economics and limited resources result in many of the psychological/emotional aspects to be ignored by neurologists, or trampled upon by mental-health practitioners. Most of the fundamental emotional effects from epilepsy originate from the Limbic System. Organic based depression is probably from one side of the Limbic System, as the seizures of TLE demonstrates an example of this theory. Sometimes TLE seizures aggravates depression, while opposite sided TLE seizures often alleviates depression.
Even if epilepsy wasn't involved, I believe psychiatry is a dangerous mess. A book available with preview on books.google, that addresses parts of the mess is "Toxic Psychiatry" by Peter R. Breggin (1991).
The forum here on "Ecstatic Seizures", discussion/985093, includes links to internet sites of the references (many near the bottom of the first page, today, on March 25, 2010).
The book "Distinguishing Psychological From Organic Disorder" by Robert L. Taylor has a section on Epilepsy that illustrates how tremendous of a problem Psychiatry's prejudices can be at times with epilepsy, a preview at:
http://books.google....cover&dq=Dis...
Tadzio
