Evaluation of Depression with Mixed Features and Bipolarity Screening in Patients with Epilepsy

Objective: To investigate depression with mixed features (MXD) and risk of bipolarity and to explore the association between clinical variables in patients with epilepsy.

Materials and Methods: A total of 62 patients who were followed up with epilepsy diagnosis at least 2 years were enrolled. Demographic and clinical data were collected using face to face interview. All subjects also performed modified hypomania checklist (mHCL), Beck depression inventory (BDI), and the mood disorder questionnaire (MDQ).

Results: According to the BDI, 25 (40.3%) of the cases required additional psychiatric examination for depression. MDQ scores indicated that 7 (9.7%) of the cases required additional psychiatric evaluation for bipolar disorder. Due to the mHCL assessment, 20 (32.2%) cases had at least 3 manic symptoms, and 9 (14.5%) cases had at least 13 manic symptoms of mixed depression. A significant positive correlation was found between the scores of BDI and mHCL (r = 0.338, P = .007) and the scores of mHCL and MDQ (r = 0.694, P < .001). In addition, bipolarity risk was significantly higher in patients with generalized epilepsy, than partial epilepsy (P = .040).

Conclusion: Our results suggest that MXD is more common and the risk of bipolarity is higher in patients with epilepsy. Therefore, clinical assessment of MXD is substantial for determining bipolarity in epileptic individuals.

Cite this article as: Akinci E, Basaran S, İbrahim Tas H. Evaluation of depression with mixed features and bipolarity screening in patients with epilepsy. Psychiatr Clin Psychopharmacol. 2021; 31: 77-82.