Depressive symptomatology in a general hospital sample of outpatients with temporal lobe epilepsy: a controlled study

We compared temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) outpatients attending a general hospital with depressed psychiatric patients and normal control subjects to investigate depressive symptomatology. Both clinician-rated measures and self-report questionnaires were used. Rates of depressive and anxious symptomatology in TLE subjects were higher than those in a normal control sample, but TLE subjects did not differ significantly from controls on anxiety measures. The depressed psychiatric group scored higher than the TLE and control groups on both depression and anxiety measures. Rates of depressive symptomatology in the TLE group were lower than those reported in previous studies for persons attending specialist epilepsy clinics, but similar to the findings of one community study.