Too much of a good thing: Overtreatment in epilepsy

Disagreements between clinicians and patients when considering treatment often arise because patient and practitioner differ as to what they believe constitutes overtreatment. In this paper, I focus on tensions that can arise between practitioner and patients with a particular illness: temporal lobe epilepsy. I argue that some ill patients with temporal lobe epilepsy may believe that maintaining their current condition is preferable to suppressing it. Consequently, they view what practitioners tend to see as the right amount of treatment (that which eliminates seizures) as excessive. I argue that in some cases, these patients' beliefs are justified, but that failure to acknowledge this on the part of practitioners may lead to overtreatment in a number of ways.