( People diagnosed with epilepsy are five...)Epilepsy Increases Suicide Risks,Health

People diagnosed with epilepsy are five times more likely than their peers to commit suicide in the six months following the diagnosis , Danish researchers report. Epileptics are three times more likely to commit suicide than people who don't have the disorder.

Researchers at Aarhus University Hospital studied more than 21,000 cases of suicide in Denmark between 1981 and 1997. They compared that data against information from more than 423,000 people who did not commit suicide. The results showed that in a patient with a history of psychiatric disease there was a 29-fold increase in risk of suicide (OR 29.2, 95% CI 16.4-51.9, P <0.0001).

The author Jakob Christensen, M.D., of Aarhus University Hospital, wrote in the The Lancet Neurology, "Individuals with epilepsy have a higher risk of suicide, even if co-existing psychiatric disease, demographic differences and socio-economic factors are taken into account,"

"Our study identifies people with newly diagnosed epilepsy as a vulnerable group that require special attention." ``The effect on daily lives of patients, such as loss of job and driving license, is greatest shortly after diagnosis,'' the researchers said. While epileptics experience a high rate of depression and other mental illnesses, ``we also observed a high suicide risk shortly after the diagnosis among epilepsy patients without psychiatric disease,'' they said.

Epilepsy occurs when clusters of nerve cells in the brain signal abnormally, causing strange sensations, behavior, convulsions, muscle spasms and seizures. About 50 million people worldwide suffer from the condition, with roughly 75 new cases diagnosed every day, according to Britain's National Society for Epilepsy.

``Uncontrolled seizures and drug side effects can have a devastating effect on the quality of life for people with the condition,'' Ingrid Burns, public relations manager at U.K. advocacy group Epilepsy Action, ``Many asp
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