[Association of schizophrenic and convulsive manifestations in children]

The authors studied 25 preschool children with schizophrenia and schizophreniform states associated with residual-organic damage to the brain who also presented various convulsive manifestations. Patients with this combination were far less numerous than patients with convulsive manifestations without schizophreniform symptoms and with schizophrenia without convulsive manifestations. With regard to paroxysmal phenomena per se, no significant differences were discovered in patients with the schizophreniform symptomatology versus patients with convulsive manifestations without symptoms of schizophrenia. The study showed that in the majority of cases, the patients had infantile schizophrenia against an organically altered background. In schizophreniform conditions that resulted from residual symptoms of the organic damage to the brain, the epileptiform syndrome was more stable. The schizophreniform symptomatology in some cases was associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Differentiation of "schizoepilepsy" as a separate nosological entity was found to be unsubstantiated. Administration of neuroleptics induced enhancement of paroxysmal manifestations in some patients.