Dr Laura Marsh is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, where she is involved in research and clinical care. She has written a thorough chapter on the psychiatric symptoms that may arise in people with epilepsy. This is a problem that is often not recognized by health-care providers or by people with epilepsy. Yet, psychiatric symptoms are common. Up to 50% of people with epilepsy have depression, and depression is more common in women than in men. Anxiety, excessive mood swings, and irritability are other psychiatric symptoms that people with epilepsy may experience.

I had the good fortune to work closely with Dr Marsh when we were at Stanford University. She did important research there into how seizures cause emotional symptoms. She showed that people with epilepsy have different emotional symptoms depending on the area of the brain affected by the seizures. In addition to her work on the biological basis of emotional symptoms, Dr Marsh cared for many people with epilepsy. She knows first hand the difficult challenges epilepsy may bring.

In this chapter, Dr Marsh identifies environmental causes as well as biological triggers for psychiatric symptoms in people with epilepsy. She stresses that these symptoms should receive medical attention and discusses some of the safe and effective treatments that are available. After all, emotional health is an essential part of overall well-being.