EPILEPSY
The second most common physical cause of emotionally distressing symptoms, after the metabolic disorders we have just discussed, is epilepsy. Approximately 7 percent of mentally disturbed patients have some form of epilepsy.
Epilepsy affects between 1 and 2 percent of the U.S. population. Of people who have epilepsy, two-thirds appear to have no structural abnormality of the brain; in the remaining third, the disease can be traced to brain damage at birth, a severe head injury, an infection that caused brain damage, or a brain tumor.
The emotional symptoms of epilepsy can involve either anxiety or depression or both. Once a person has had a convulsive seizure, he or she may live in constant apprehension that another seizure will occur. There may be occasional, transient feelings of unreality.
Physical symptoms include peculiar stomach sensations, distorted vision, occasional bizarre behavior such as laughing for no apparent reason or sudden and unprovoked anger, loss of consciousness, and convulsions.
PARKINSONISM
Parkinson's disease often causes anxiety or depression. Physical symptoms early in the course of the disease include slowing of movement and inability to write one's name without the handwriting becoming smaller and smaller. Later symptoms include tremors, muscle stiffness or rigidity, nervousness, and tension.
MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
Multiple sclerosis usually begins in people between the ages of twenty and forty, affecting slightly more women than men. Symptoms may disappear after one or a number of attacks, or they may get progressively worse and cause severe disability.