Publication:

Obsessive compulsive symptoms in patients with primary generalized and partial onset epilepsy

Background To find out and compare the obsessive-compulsive symptoms / disorder among patients of primary generalized and partial onset epilepsy.

Methods Patients with epilepsy diagnosed clinically at psychiatric out patient’s department were selected for the study and categorized as primary generalized onset tonic clonic seizure type and partial onset seizure. Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive symptoms check list and scale was applied to find out the obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

Results A total of 110 patients were categorized as primary generalized (GE) 49 and partial onset epilepsy (PE) 61 patients. Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms (OCS) were found to be 19.9%, and OCD among 3.63%. Mean Y-BOCS scores for obsession were found to be 3.77±1.93 and 4.93±2.03, (t = -3.034, df= 108, p= .003). Whereas the mean Y-BOCS compulsions score was 2.93±1.96 and 4.62±1.87 was (t = -4.590, df= 108, p= .000) for GE and PE group respectively.

Conclusions OCD and OCS among the epilepsy patients were found to be 3.63%, and 19.9% respectively, and significantly higher mean obsessive and compulsive score were found for the group of partial onset epilepsy.