Brief Report: Psychogenic Nonepileptic Events in Pediatric Patients with Autism or Intellectual Disability

Daniel A Freedman; Debbie Terry; Laurie Enciso; Kristen Trott; Mary Burch; Dara V F Albert

doi:10.1007/s10803-022-05479-1

Brief Report: Psychogenic Nonepileptic Events in Pediatric Patients with Autism or Intellectual Disability

J Autism Dev Disord. 2023 Jul;53(7):2928-2932. doi: 10.1007/s10803-022-05479-1. Epub 2022 Feb 25.

Authors

Daniel A Freedman¹, Debbie Terry², Laurie Enciso², Kristen Trott³, Mary Burch², Dara V F Albert²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, Dell Medical School, 1301 Barbara Jordan Blvd., Ste 200-G, Austin, TX, 78723, USA. [email protected].
² Division of Child Neurology, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.
³ Division of Pediatric Psychology and Neuropsychology, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.

PMID: 35212867
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-022-05479-1

Abstract

This is a retrospective case series of pediatric patients referred to the psychogenic nonepileptic events clinic (PNEE) who had comorbid diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or intellectual disability (ID). We describe 15 patients, nine with ASD and six with ID who had a telephone visit follow-up at 12 months. There were higher rates of male gender (40%) and comorbid epilepsy (53%) compared to the larger PNEE cohort. Eleven patients were available for follow-up and ten patients had improvement in events or were event-free. We report that patients with ASD or ID can develop PNEE and experience improvement from events.

Keywords: Autism; Intellectual disability; Pediatric epilepsy; Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures.

MeSH terms

Autism Spectrum Disorder* / diagnosis
Autism Spectrum Disorder* / epidemiology
Autism Spectrum Disorder* / psychology
Autistic Disorder*
Child
Epilepsy* / diagnosis
Epilepsy* / epidemiology
Epilepsy* / psychology
Humans
Intellectual Disability* / diagnosis
Intellectual Disability* / epidemiology
Intellectual Disability* / psychology
Male
Retrospective Studies