Objectives: According to recent evidence, trauma and stress are important etiological factors in pathogenesis of schizophrenia. However, the hypothetical influence of traumatic stress on epileptic-like (or kindling) phenomena in schizophrenia is at this time unclear.
Methods: In order to discover the influence of trauma, 82 patients with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and 50 healthy controls were assessed for symptoms of dissociation, traumatic stress and psycho-sensory symptoms of epileptic origin.
Results: We have found significant traumatization and dissociation in patients who met the cut-off score for psychosensory epileptic-like symptoms and also significant correlations among these measures have been found.
Conclusions: These data suggest a certain role of epileptic-like phenomena in dissociative states in schizophrenia and are in accordance with rare intracranial EEG findings which suggest a certain role of epileptiform events in schizophrenia.