Hi! Is there anyone here who has been diagnosed with pseudoseizures? I have had a seizure disorder for 9 years now. At one point, after having a right temporal lobectomy, I was told I was having pseudoseizures. (false seizures)The neurologist said she couldn't help me. Go see a psychiatrist. I was told these are harder to treat being that they are psychological. It scared me. I couldn't think of why I would be having them. But, after seeing another eptologist, that fell through. I was still having real seizures. I was kind of disapointed in a way realizing the surgery didn't work. I was wondering, to those of you who have these type of seizures, how they are treated? Since I was told they are harder to treat. What inspires them? Do you have to have had physical seizures in order to have pseudoseizures? Any imformation on this topic ? Interested. Thanks, Johnna

My husband has both epileptic and pseudoseizures. He had a bout of encephalitus 2 years ago, which put him in ITU for 17 days, on a life support machine etc. The encephalitus left him with epilepsy and the trauma left him with psuedo seizures. You don't have to have epileptic seizures to have pseudoseizures, but it is often the case that some people will have both. Pseudoseizures usually relate to some kind of trauma, often physical or sexual abuse as a child, which manifests itself in non-epileptic seizures at a later date, though ofcourse it must be remembered that it is not always a trauma of this kind that causes these seizures. Non-epileptic seizures are almost identical to epileptic siezures, and many epitologists, if they are honest, will tell you they find it very difficult to distinguish between the two, and would rather rely on an eeg, or a bout of telemetry if possible before they diagnose non epileptic seizures, and even then they need to be lucky enough to catch both types during that session on the eeg machine. My husband has had 15 days in all in telemetry and luckily both epileptic and non-epileptic siezures were recorded. He is lucky in the sense that the non-epileptic siezures were caught very soon after they started, but many people go for years and years being treated for epilepsy alone, as opposed to pseudosiezures also, and the longer they have been going on for, the harder they are to treat. My husband is treated with drugs for the epilepsy, which incidentally isn't working too well, and he has been treated with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the non-epileptic seizures, which has greatly improved these attacks, but hasn't completely got rid of them. I have loads of info about all this stuff if you need to ask anything else, please feel free.
How are you doing with your seizures?
Is there anything you can think of that may have traumatised you in the past?
Kind regards
Candida.

Candida,
Thank you for the info.That was very helpful. I was told it is very hard to distinguish between the two. This was suggested to me after having gone through the intensive 10 monitoring prior to surgery. I had several seizures that didn't show up on the EEG. So she assumed they were pseudo seizures. After the surgery I was still having seizures. She didn't believe this and got extremely agravated with me. Which in return frustrated me. She was so sure that these were pseudo. She withdrew me from all my meds. Coming off the meds was a disaster. Landed me in the hospital in a constant seizure state. She was quite arrogant with my primary physician. the next time I saw her she said she didn't know what happened and that she couldn't help me. Then proceeded to excuse me from her office. I went to my prior neurologist and he refered me to (so I am told) one of the best eptologists in the world. Out of state unfortunately. I then went through the 2 week sit in the hospital for monitoring again. The last two days I had 13 seizures! All showing up on the EEG. Only they were coming from the opposite side of the brain than what she recorded.??? this doctor told me he didn't think I've ever had a pseudo seizure. Who do you believe? Anyway, I was tried on different meds. I continued to have seizures. They progressively got worse. Finally after 8 years I am on a med that works! I have been seizure free for over a year! Can you define cognitive behavioral therapy? I'm not sure what this is. I am also unaware of what a telemetry test is. As far as I know I haven't had any traumas in the past. Thanks again. I wish you and your husband all the best. Johnna