Brief Report: Psychogenic Nonepileptic Events in Pediatric Patients with Autism or Intellectual Disability.

Abstract

This is a retrospective case series of pediatric patients referred to the psychogenic nonepileptic events clinic (PNEE) who had comorbid diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or intellectual disability (ID). We describe 15 patients, nine with ASD and six with ID who had a telephone visit follow-up at 12months. There were higher rates of male gender (40%) and comorbid epilepsy (53%) compared to the larger PNEE cohort. Eleven patients were available for follow-up and ten patients had improvement in events or were event-free. We report that patients with ASD or ID can develop PNEE and experience improvement from events.