Association of Psychogenic Non-epileptic Seizures with Epilepsy in Children

Abstract

Background: Currently, society’s concern for mental health is increasing, and children’s mental health problems are gradually coming to the fore. Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES)is a seizure-like behavioural alteration of consciousness without physiological discharges that is common in the pre- and post-pubertal child population. Clinically, PNES are often differentiated from epileptic seizures by Electroencephalography (EEG). According to available studies, PNES seizures are often closely associated with emotional stress, family conflict, and shock. Methods: In this paper a literature search was conducted on PubMed with the key search term: pediatric psychogenic epilepsy and the selection range: last 10 years (2015-2025), resulting in 118 articles. Twelve of these articles with information on PNES comorbid seizures were reviewed, and three articles with publicly available past data were extracted, calculated and analysed for the probability of comorbid seizures or a history of seizures in a random sample of patients with PNES, and the data related to their associations were derived. Conclusion: There is an association between PNES and epilepsy in children, with a comorbidity rate of 20.32%, children with a history of epilepsy are more likely to have PNES, and children diagnosed with PNES are more likely to have epileptic seizures. In the future, the mental health of children with a history of epilepsy could be monitored to prevent the development of PNES in children, and the EEG of children with PNES could be monitored in advance for a tendency to discharge to prevent epilepsy.