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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO029

Epilepsy and suicide: an underestimated concern?

EPILEPSY AND SUICIDE: AN UNDERSTATED WORRY?

Epilepsy increases suicide risk independently of psychiatric comorbidity, and patients with epilepsy require systematic screening for suicide risk.

The study aimed to assess whether patients with epilepsy have a higher suicide risk regardless of the presence of psychiatric comorbidity. A nonsystematic search of PubMed was conducted using the keywords epilepsy, seizure, suicide, suicidal ideation, and mental health, and the available evidence was synthesized in a narrative review. Patients with epilepsy have a 2- to 5-fold higher risk of psychiatric disorders than the general population; the reported prevalence of suicidal ideation ranges from 8.1% to 23.2%, suicide attempt rates reach 7.4% in some studies, and postictal suicidal ideation occurs in up to 13% of patients and may persist for up to 24 hours. Patients with epilepsy are 3 times more likely to attempt suicide; a 2019 meta-analysis by Christensen and colleagues found that suicide risk was more than 3 times higher in people diagnosed with epilepsy, both in those with and those without a documented history of psychiatric disorders, even after adjustment for socioeconomic factors, demonstrating an independent effect of epilepsy on suicide risk. Risk factors include age at onset, female sex, drug-resistant epilepsy and temporal lobe epilepsy, high seizure frequency and long seizure duration, use of multiple antiseizure medications, and levetiracetam treatment; however, some studies have found that different diagnoses do not affect relative risk. Various sources also point to a bidirectional relationship between epilepsy and depression. Clinical implications include classifying suicide risk as low, moderate, or imminent; using the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) and Brief Suicide Safety Assessment (BSSA); actively asking about suicidal ideation; and, in at-risk patients, favoring antiseizure medications with mood-stabilizing properties while avoiding those with adverse psychotropic effects. A 2026 study by Barnard and colleagues found an association between suicidality at diagnosis and subsequent drug-resistant epilepsy, suggesting that early screening may enable early identification of risk; the authors emphasize that developing standardized screening strategies is a priority.

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