Hi @adoptivemother
First, I am very happy to know your daughter is doing better since she changed medication. Thank God!!! Being treated by specialists in epilepsy can make a great difference in epilepsy treatment and life quality.
Definitely, it would be great if we had an exam that could make the process of finding the right drugs and dosages easier. Who knows in the near future? Let's pray for that! Neurology is the medical area that has been mostly studied in recent years, but there is still a lot to be discovered and answered.
For sure, as you well said, living with epilepsy is a risk factor for depression, anger, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. But what causes that, the epilepsy in itself, the treatment, or both things together? I for example had depression and suicidal thoughts in my teenage years when my seizures started, well before having the diagnosis of epilepsy and starting treatment for it. I have overcome this depression with psychotherapy and spiritual support. When I started my epilepsy treatment with AEDs in 2019 I had depression again. Were the AEDs I tried the only reason for my depression? Hard to say, because receiving the diagnosis of epilepsy was something already hard to process, then the many other side-effects of the medication I had to deal with, quitting my job and professional life, etc. But I believe that some AEDs can for sure leverage this symptom that we with epilepsy already have some predisposition. I say that, because I got much better when just being treated with pure CBD (Epidiolex), though it did not control all my seizures.
Wishing you and your family a blessed Eastern!
Chris (@santosha)