Targeted ReviewClinic-friendly screening for cognitive and mental health problems in school-aged youth with epilepsy

- Screening of children with epilepsy involves asking questions to elicit red flags about cognitive and mental health concerns.
- Abbreviated tools can further define and delineate problems and inform the next steps for intervention.
- A multidisciplinary team approach can help bridge the gap to meet the comprehensive care needs of epilepsy patients.
- Primary care providers can play a role in screening and addressing cognitive and mental health problems.

Cognitive, psychiatric, psychosocial, and behavioral difficulties are common in youth with epilepsy. Collectively, these comorbidities can be referred to as mental health problems as they reflect brain and behavioral function. Detection and treatment of mental health problems remain an unmet need in epilepsy care that can impact epilepsy, psychosocial, scholastic, and quality-of-life outcomes. Given limited resources in everyday pediatric epilepsy practice, this targeted review provides a stratified plan and suggested tools for screening school-aged youth with epilepsy for the presence of mental health problems. Comanagement of epilepsy and associated comorbidities is a newer concept that may help address the complex, long-term needs of patients by using a multidisciplinary team approach and by engaging primary care providers.