Epilepsy Talk
Suicide and Epilepsy
21 Comments
The statistics are depressing. (Which is one of the chief factors in suicide.) But studies say that suicide can happen to anyone at any age.
Statistics
Studies show that newly diagnosed epilepsy patients are five times more likely to commit suicide than patients who had been diagnosed more than six months previously.
And a 29-fold increase in suicide risk was seen in newly diagnosed patients with a history of psychiatric illness.
“Newly diagnosed patients often have many misconceptions about the disease,” researcher Per Sidenius, MD, of Aarhus University says. “They often don’t understand that there are good treatments with few side effects.”
A New Life — From Epilepsy to Brain Surgery
16 Comments
Leanne Chilton, triumphant author of “Seizure-Free: From Epilepsy to Brain Surgery, I Survived and You Can, Too!” is a proud survivor and has a wealth of wisdom to share.
“We can’t control the future,” she says. “But we can make every attempt to improve the quality of our lives.”
Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills
9 Comments
Most people don’t want to think about death and dying — so they don’t. Until they have to.
Unfortunately, that often means that families are left struggling with difficult decisions about important matters, such as whether or not Mom would like to be kept alive using a ventilator, or who should be in charge of managing Dad’s financial affairs, because Mom or Dad never made clear what they wanted for themselves.
Advance directives are important tools for anyone to have, because even the healthiest person could experience a sudden accident and not be able to speak for herself…
