Stress and epilepsy: the Gulf war experience

Stress is commonly believed to precipitate seizures in some patients with epilepsy, but direct examination of this assumption is problematic because of the difficulty in defining vague factors such as ‘emotional stress’. Using a questionnaire, we have recorded seizure frequency during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Israelis were under stress from the threat of Scud missile attacks, in 100 consecutive adult patients with epilepsy. Increased frequency of seizures was reported by eight patients. These were younger than the other patients, the majority showed generalized epileptic EEG activity and all had generalized seizures (secondarily generalized in four). Only four had seizures directly related to the sounding of an alarm and in the others, non-compliance, being off medication at the time and disturbed sleep were probable contributory factors. We conclude that, in this series, epilepsy control was only weakly affected by an acute external emotional stress factor.