Prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder in adults with epilepsy: A meta-analysis

Many studies highlight the increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in people with epilepsy (PWE). Despite the presence of significant research focusing on PTSD in PWE, the methodologies and results of these studies are heterogenous. Therefore, we aim to synthetize the literature and assess the prevalence of PTSD in PWE. We conducted a systematic literature to calculate a pooled prevalence of PTSD in adults with epilepsy. If the studies included patients with functional/dissociative seizure (FDS), a pooled prevalence of PTSD was also calculated for this group. The literature search yielded 10,732 articles, of which 38 studies met our inclusion criteria. High heterogeneity in PTSD prevalence estimates was found across studies for both epilepsy (I2= 97.0 %) and FDS (I2 = 90.7 %). The pooled prevalence of PTSD among the epilepsy group (n = 5545) was 7.7% [95% CI: 5.2 %; 11.2 %], whereas for the FDS group (n = 1409), it was 33.4 % [95 % CI: 23.4 %; 45.2 %]. Our sensitivity analysis, including only studies with semi-structured interviews and validated questionnaires, found a pooled PTSD prevalence of 6.7% [95% CI: 4.3 to 10.3] in epilepsy patients and 33.1 % [95% CI: 21.8 to 46.8] in FDS patients. Our study underscores the importance of systematically evaluating traumatic experiences as using standardized, validated scales combined with structured clinical interviews for PTSD diagnosis.