Affective disorders in epilepsies: a neuropsychiatric review.

Psychiatry and neurology are well-established as separate disciplines and they may view an issue of mutual concern, such as affective disorder in people with epilepsy, from such different premises that the important synthesis of behavioural neurology, or neuropsychiatry, will be made ineffective. Nosological problems stemming from the use of diagnostic manuals are discussed and revealed in case reports. Reports of affective disorder in persons with brain disorders are relatively rare, possibly as a consequence of nosological problems which stem from a maintenance of a tradition of "functional" disorder. New cases of bipolar disorder and organic mania are given with commentary on the preponderant lateralization of cerebral dysfunction to the right cerebral hemisphere in manic cases.