Today marks National Epilepsy Day, a disorder caused by an imbalance in the electrical activity of neurons. It is characterized by neurological disorders that leave a predisposition in the brain to recurrent epileptic seizures (which may or may not be convulsive, depending on the type) that result in neurological and psychological consequences, with changes in quality of life.
We spoke with Dr. Casariego de Córdoba, specialist in Neurology at the Neurological Sciences Unit, to learn a little more about this pathology.
No one is epileptic
A few years ago I was at a Neurology congress in which a person who belonged to an association of patients with epilepsy was participating.
In a talk he gave, he said, among many other things, something that I did not pay much attention to at the time. We had to change the way we, the physicians first and the rest of society later, referred to patients with epilepsy.
Instead of telling them that they were epileptics, we should tell them that they suffered from or had epilepsy.
Curiously, being something I did not give much relevance to at the time, over time the idea has come to my mind many times, and each time it has done so, it has become more and more important.
Indeed, it has nothing to do with thinking “I am epileptic” with “I have or suffer from epilepsy”.
With the first form, one forgets the person behind it and socially stigmatizes him or her.
The second form only indicates that this person suffers from a disease, and that this disease does not encompass, invade and contaminate him/her, because most of the time he/she does not have to feel “epileptic” or sick.
Do you say “I am Parkinson’s”, “I am cancer”, “I am depression”?
But there are other diseases that are also stigmatized: “I am schizophrenic”, “I am bipolar”.
And it’s primarily we physicians who are to blame for that.
And now we must start to remedy it.
To consider epilepsy as just another disease, to see that behind it there is a person who suffers from it and to assist him or her as best we know how, with our science and our good work.
Epilepsy Day is the day of the patients, and they should be the protagonists. And it should serve, among other things, to make everyone think about what they can do to help them and how they should do it.
More information on epilepsy can be found on the FEDE website, on the SEN website and on the WHO website.