Mar 082012
This story in the New York Times is definitely not about epilepsy. But it is about seizures, an epidemic of them, with no apparent organic cause, among girls at a high school. Interesting.
The Art of Epilepsy
Representations of Epilepsy in Art and Culture
Epilepsy Books from Powell’s
Click to Search Epilepsy at Powell's
Recommended
Recommended
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
by Anne Fadiman
The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology
by Owsei Temkin
Epilepsy in Our World: Stories of Living with Seizures from Around the World (Brainstorms)
by Steven C. Schachter
I remember this piece because I found it very troubling. Scientists and clinicians have a way of attributing things they don’t understand to underlying emotional issues. While evidence-based data is required to diagnose the disorders they are familiar with, this same standard of proof is not applied when they cannot explain a condition and therefore decide it’s a problem of troubled upbringing, stressed families, etc.
Jessica