On the Epileptiform Convulsions Appeared during Psychotropic Drug Treatment

Abstract

For the purpose of approaching the actualities of epileptiform convulsions which appear in the patients with various psychotic disorders during their drug treatment, the author has studied 70 cases which were collected in six affiliate hospitals with a special reference to back ground psychotic disorders, preceding medications, convulsive predisposition, electroencephalographical features, course and treatment following the first convulsive incidence.
As to the back ground psychoses, it is evident that convuls ions are liable to appear in some phasic or periodic type of disorders such as atypical psychoses, catatonic type of schizophrenia, and so on. Family history of psychotic and convulsive disorders as personal history of childhood convulsion and electroshock therapy were frequently found in the studied cases. Furthermore, those who had some evidence of convulsive predisposition have presented an earlier onset of clinical attack and a higher tendeney of its reccurence than the others.
Among psychotropic drugs, phenothiazines and tricyclic antid epressants seems to be more risky and butylophenones to be less risky as far as convulsive attack is concerned. The clinical course and outcome of convulsive incidence are quite similar to that of childhood convulsions, of which the majority have the attack only once for life.
As the results of this study, the author has been c onvinced that the above mentioned convulsive incidences are some kind of occasional convulsive seizure (Gelegenheitskrampf) induced by the administration of potent paychotropic drugs.