What is epilepsy?

Epilepsy is a condition where a person suffers recurrent unprovoked epileptic seizures. A seizure is a sudden, brief event where there is a change in a person’s awareness of where they are or what they are doing, their behaviour or their feelings.

 

Epileptic seizures are caused by sudden interruption of electrical signals between brain cells and therefore always start in the brain. Other kinds of attacks may look like epileptic seizures but are not due to abnormalities of brain electricity and may be due to fainting or irregularity of the heartbeat.

 

Some non-epileptic attacks may be associated with psychological stresses. During an epileptic seizure any of the following functions of the brain may be affected;

• personality
• mood
• memory
• movement
• speech
• consciousness
• smell

...to mention but a few.

 

 

Epileptic seizures can vary greatly from one person to another and within the same person depending on the part of the brain that is affected. There are many different types of epileptic seizures and some people have more than one type. Not all seizures involve a convulsion i.e. jerking or shaking movements. About one in twenty people will have a single epileptic seizure at some point during their life. A single epileptic seizure however does not give a person a diagnosis of epilepsy.

Epilepsy is the most common serious neurological condition in the UK affecting at least 456,000 people. It is possibly the most common neurological condition in the world. It is more common in children and people over the age of 65 but anyone can develop epilepsy regardless of age, race, gender or social class.

 

 

 

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