DID and psychogenic seizures

I was looking on another website called DID you know? And it says psychogenic seizures aka pseudoseizures are common in people with DID. I have been diagnosed with both epileptic and psychogenic seizures. What about you? Do you have psychogenic seiziures? And does anyone know WHY people with DID are more prone to them than other psych disorders?

actually pseudo seizures are common ...anyone mental disordered or not can have them.. I know many children who have epilepsy (a seizure disorder/health issue) who have unconsciously caused their self to have pseudo seizures for attention, to get out of homework or a test, and other reasons...

it happens with people under a lot of stress, with depression with bipolar disorder with schizophrenia and many other things too.

I had pseudo seizures because was not eating correctly and not getting enough fluids.

I have also gotten them because of my medications not being the correct dosage /taking my medications wrong/ dr accidentally prescribed the wrong combo of medications and other reasons.

I have never gotten pseudo seizures from having DID.

pseudo seizures are like epilepsy seizures but do not have the electrical impulse firing in the brain.

DID people are no more prone to having them then any other medical mental or normal reason. even normal people with no medical/mental health issues can have them.

here where I live its classified as a conversion /facticious disorder.. where physical or mental symptoms are shown in having false seizures (False is what the word pseudo means in medical terms). it got its classification because false seizures dont have the electrical firing of electrical impulses in the brain like all the other seizure disorders and it was first noticed in people who were faking having epileptic seizures for attention and other reasons.

the mental health community here where I live and work (new york which is in the USA) now know its like when depression can show itself in a person by causing the person to have aches/ pains headaches.

treatment for pseudo seizures here where I live and work is focusing on the treatment for the mental disorder that is showing itself by creating false seizures..

if the persons diagnosis is depression a prescription for antidepressants will make it so the person no longer has the false seizures

if the person has schizophrenia a prescription for anti psychotics will prevent the false seizures.

if the person has a heart problem that is showing itself by having false seizures then heart medication will stop the false seizures.

if the person has DID, treatment for DID (grounding, medication for depresion/anxiety and other treatments for DID) will stop the seizures.

if the false seizures happen when a person is using drugs or alcohol the treatment is no more drinking and no more alcohol consumption, AA, NA and other treatments for drug and alcohol problems.

if the cause of the seizures is work stress then a change of job / vacation or other work related adjustments..

sometimes its a bit complicated with finding the right problem that is causing the false seizures and the right treatment but eventually with narrowing down/ruling out/ diagnostic testing and other ways to discover what is causing the false seizures the person is able to heal/recover from them

monarch butterfly... you are healing at an amazing rate. my guess is that you dont have to worry about having seizures. usually DID is at its worst before a person enters treatment and then gets better with treatment. I have 54 clients and only one of them has pseudo seizures.

Also its best that you get information from your treatment providers...what you find online is not always true..its just the view points of those that post the material you are finding...

to give you an example ...recently a wikipedia member came forwards with their own website had contained false information ...this website is what many feel is the one to go by for online encyclopedia information...

Wikipedia biography controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

just because you find something online does not make it true..

talk with your treatment providers they will tell you how rare it really is for someone to have DID let alone false seizures....not saying it doesnt happen because it does but it does not commonly occur..and is not just with DID.

any one for an y number of reasons can have them.

its best to rely more on your own treatment providers first, online websites/resources are not meant to take the place of what's what by your own treatment providers.

True and I will talk to my T. I was diagnosed with conversion disorder mixed presentation in 2004. That is when i was diagnosed wiyh psychogenic seizures. I was diagnosed eith epilepsy four years prior most likely due to my being a preemie.

Psychogenic seizures are not false though. My neurologist says they carry the same stigma and cause the same muscle and body reactions as epileptic ones do. The only difference. You can not get brain dammage from them or status epilepticus. The longest psychogenic seizure ive had was six hours. Regardless eether that website was correct i am still curious as to whether others have these type of seizures.

Thankyou for your compliment Amanda! I don't think it's so much a matter of me healling well. It's just that it didn't take long for me to realise I'd known my 2 girls si.ce i wss young and they are safe for me!! It was the emotional abuse my BF, was doing i did not recognise as abuse and the fake alters that was truly usettingvme. I have journaling and my T to thank for figuring it all out!

I use the term ...false seizures because thats what the word ...pseudo ....means... if you google that word you will see its a medical term for the world false...

medical and mental health terms are like different language....

example in paris they say the word ...bon....
in america the same word is ....good.

in paris the word is Jetaime
in america we say the same thing but with different words...I like.

in medical terms ...pseudo
means the word ...false.

it doesnt mean the seizures are any more not real then say epilepsy. it just is a different "language"

a person can say they broke a bone or they can say they had a fracture of their metatarsel.

a person can say they have MPD or they can say they have DID, same thing just different words for it.

here where I live and work its called false seizures or the word pseudo seizure. same thing just different vocabulary.

I know the meaning of pseudo but I was concerned when you wrote fake that 1. Other people would think these are truly malingering seizures. 2. I've had really horrible experiences at ER because of my seizurers. So in order to prevent misinformation or misconclusion by leople less familiar with the term I thought I'd mention they are true seizures, just from a different area of the brain. Now they are more commonly reffered to as psychogenic seizures anyway. Begginning in the psyche.

interesting. many years ago I had something that my T and doc thought might be seizures but when it was ruled that it wasn't epilepsy, they ignored it. No more was said. Also experienced severe dizziness for 2 years. Eventually as my stress lowered, these episodes pretty much stopped as well. Still have some activity in arms/hands and head sometimes but very short lived.
hmmm

That IS interesting!

My collge roomy had Absence seizures. She was on medication for them. She was the first to notice my shifting. I did not even have a clue I was DID inspite of tons of odd things like ending up in different places with zero memory of going there or where I was. I had to ask someone which state I was in!

She noticed that there were times I would just stop mid thought and pick up where I left off without knowing I was "gone" at all. She thought I was having the type of seizures she was having and talked me into seeing her nurologist who was an expert in seizures.

While they had me in the testing, It happened. He reviewed the scans and told me he had ne er seen anything like it and had no clue what was going on with my brain. But it was NOT a seizure.

He showed me the waves and stuff but I didn't understand much of what he was saying. What I did understand was my brain was going from being fully awake right into the wave pattern for being in the deepest stage of sleep. Then it woke up to the same level it was at before the event. It did not go through the other stages that are supposed to lead up to that deep state of sleep or back again.

The best he could do was tell me my brain was "rebooting" for some reason.

Of course that testing was done in 1995... so I am sure they know far more now.

When I started seeing my T, I told him about this. He said that is common for DID. So now I don't worry about it. I just have to explain it sometimes to people who may not know me.

not in my location....when a treatment provider is talking to a client/patient here they dont use the term psychogenic. here where I live and work the word used is false seizures and the word pseudo seizures...

though the problem is common in that it happens with many mental and physical health issues and can happen to completely normal people too...

each location, religion, culture .....call it by different names..

I know a religion that calls this being taken over by evil forces
I know another religion that calls this taking a walk with jesus
I know a culture that calls this a mental break
another culture calls this pseudo status
another culture that calls psychogenic seizures pleasure tides because it leaves a person feeling similar to having an orgasm..(sometimes disoriented, unconnected, faint, dizzy, tired exhausted.. and other feelings)

every location, culture, religion and what have you, has their own way that they approach, diagnose and name mental and physical health issues/symptoms/problems.

my location does not commonly call it psychogenic seizures we call it false seizures/pseudo seizures. we know its the same thing but we call it by a different name.

Well wait your in New York. I am in Colorado. If you look up Conversion disorder in DSM IV it calls the. Psychogenic... hmmmm

We pow that is amazing about your EEG results! Wow

that may be the confusion we here in New York are using the book DSM IV TR not its previous standards of DSM IV. the TR stands for Text Revised which means what was in the IV edition has been updated, changed revised to reflect the current standards...

in may the DSM terms,vocabulary diagnostics will change again. we will then be going according to the way the DSM 5 calls symptoms and disorders here in New York.

also here in the USA not all states use the same terms, vocabulary for mental disorders and even in the same state sometimes the vocabulary is different.. those examples I gave you about what you call psychogenic seizures are called is here with in the state of new york.

I bet if you ask around to all the treatment providers in your state using the same word you will get a whole host of answers based on that treatment providers own understanding of the word, and other factors and may even come up with treatment providers who use laymans terms with their clients that may not understand nor have a DSM to look at to look up that disorder..

I know many people up state who only have 8th or 9th grade education that if you tell them psychogenic seizures the first thing they do is panic and think a treatment provider is calling them psycho (crazy).

we were taught in our training its a good thing to know the technical terms for things but to approach talking about the problems with the patients/cleints on their level of understanding, not throw medical/mental health "jargon" around scaring the crap out of people,

kind of like some people prefer the term MPD and others the term DID. or some people prefer the term counselor instead of the word therapist...
they are the same thing its just that treatment providers here where I am talk with their clients on the level ground not over their heads and bury them in medical/mental terms. heck a majority of my older clients here still call menopause things like "the change" and their monthy cycle "the curse" "a visit from Aunt Martha" and other simplier terms instead of saying the clinically correct term of "menstruation cycle."

here we meet our clients at their own levels of understanding/education/ culture.....

so we dont call it psychogenic seizures but at least our clients can understand us and dont leave the office falling apart and panicked thinking we are calling them crazy..

like I said in my profile the words I use dont always fit in with the terms that others here on psych central use. lol

we are definitely a diverse crowd here in psych central..with all our different locations, different treatment providers, different religions,...different what ever and regardless of what something is called we can always find someone who knows what we are talking about.

Yeeah ok. That makes sense. I always correct docs around here when they say pseudoseozures. I think neurologists get confused sometimes.

yea sometimes that happens with me too.

I would love to know what it is that is going on when my brain does that!

Have you ever had a video EEG done?

I have had many EEG's done... here in New York which is in the USA they dont give the patients the EEG video.. the person doing the EEG isnt usually your treatment provider. its usually a medical student, orderly, or other treatment provider called EEG Technician. they record what the wires attached to your head are sending to the computerized EEG machine. then you get dressed and leave. the technician "forwards" the EEG video information thats in the computerized machine to the EEG specialist. the specialist looks at it, writes up a report, sends the report to your doctor and then the doctor office schedules you for a follow up appointment, at the appointment your doctor tells you what the EEG results showed. everything is computerized here in New York. you can still get copies of the medical report printed off or emailed to you, but they dont give you the actual EEG video. here in the USA most if not all treatment providers are changing or have changed to using computers/ computer medical data bases / digitalized machines.

No you misunderstand Amanda. A video eeg is different from a regular eeg. A video eeg is usualy done anywhere from a day to three weeks.

You are admitted to hospital. Hooked up to eeg wires on your head and actuallly videotaped to see what happens IN your brain the second you seize. They even have a button to press which will mark the eeg tracings if you feel an aura.

Dics do this do diagnose tough cases of epilepsy or as inbmy case a combo of epilepsy and psychogenic seizures is found. They also use a simular method when they are taking the deseased part of the brain out. It is pretty standard everywhere. As I've had it done in Canada, and in two hospitals in Colorado as well. There is actually an international requirement of where the leads go for video eegs. I don't reccomend them though. While it's computerised and you can get up and go to the bathroom and such. Having the eeg leads on your head for a week REALLY messes up your hair!

I understood you. It was part of my being diagnosed with DID... one of the DID diagnostics state that the symptoms can not be because of other physical and mental health problems like seizure disorders.. so I had to have the video EEG's done to make sure my memory problems was not epilepsy or other seizure/neurological problems that share the same symptoms.

the first time I checked into the hospital and a technician hooked me up to the computerized machine and wires. then they videotaped everything for 24 hours. then I was told to get dressed and my treatment provider would be in touch.. my doctors office called and scheduled a follow up appointment. at the appointment the doctor told me I did not have epilepsy but they did get me on tape as an alternate personality. this process is pretty common here in New york when diagnosing DID because they have to rule out seizure problems before a person can be diagnosed DID under the present diagnostic criteria..

after may Im guessing it will become common diagnostic procedures for DID in other locations too because the new diagnostic criteria again contains a diagnostic criteria about seizure disorders and which kind of seizure disorder the client has.

I again had to have this kind of EEG process done during the diagnostic process of my Multiple Sclerosis. the same process was done where I had to go into the hospital, undress and for 24 hours be hooked up to the EEG/computerized machine and be video taped. the same thing happened where I was not given the actual video. when it was done i got dressed went home and the doctor scheduled the follow up appointment where he told me what the video and wires told him of whats going on.

What types of seizures does the DSM V specify? I've already been diagnosed with epilepsy of a certain seizure type and the psychogenic ones too.

the final diagnostic criteria for DID in the DSM V is not out yet.. will be out for public use in may 2013, .but in the rough draft they had on line at the dsm5 website it had some criteria's cant remember exactly but the treatment providers will need to fill out a form that tells which kind of seizures the person has/ its severity and how long the person has had the seizures. the website has removed both the rough draft for the DSM5 and the DSM IV TR criterion for each mental disorder so people can start getting used to not using past criteria and have an easier time beginning to use the new updated mental health criteria.. you can keep track of the DSM 5 at Home | APA DSM-5

the seizure criteria requires epilepsy and other known seizure disorders to be ruled out meaning your symptoms can not be because of having epilepsy.

the type of seizure disorder that comes with some people with DID is called conversion disorder here in America....where a persons dissociative disorder symptoms are being converted into a special type of seizure..that only happens under dissociative situations. it can not be because of any other mental or physical health reason/problem.

the example my supervisor used in our training last week to prepare us for the new DSM 5 publication was that .......as of right now......(may change with the final publishing).... it is defined in such a way to mean...

a person who has any type of seizure because of their medications, work, stress, high blood pressure, epilepsy, PTSD, depression,other mental and physical health issues is ruled out / dont qualify for this diagnostic criteria...

but a person who has a seizure .....only.... when they dissociate does fit the criteria. and the problem must be long term meaning it cant just now after the printing of the DSM 5 start happening to the person. they must have a history of for the past so many months or years of this kind of seizure.

mind you these standards may change in the coming months. and is only the standard for here in america other countries may have other diagnostic criteria.

My husband has seizures. Sometimes absence seizures, sometimes partial shaking, sometimes inability to communicate. We think it's because he's had so many concussions. Something's damaged so that he short circuits. Stress is a big trigger. EEGs have been...ambiguous. I don't think it's directly related to his DID. I do know that when he's having seizure days that he switches a lot more. I think it's that Jonathan and everybody wants to help take care of him when he's not well. It's kind of weird - Jonathan and JT never get the seizures but Jonny does sometimes. It's hard when your husband is having seizures and an alter comes along to help out and he gets seizures too.