Olanzapine for recurrent excessive irritability and psychotic symptoms after mesial temporal lobectomy in a patient with temporal lobe epilepsy.

We report the case of a patient with temporal lobe epilepsy, nonresponsive to antiepileptic drugs, who became seizure-free, but developed recurrent excessive irritability and psychotic symptoms after successful mesial temporal lobectomy. This patient was refractory to various pharmacological treatments including antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and benzodiazepines before being successfully treated with olanzapine.

[Prince Liev Nikoláievitch Míchkin ("The Idiot", Fiódor Dostoevsky) and the interictal personality syndrome of temporal lobe epilepsy].

Russian romancist Fiódor Dostoevsky's composition, besides its extraordinary literary value, has a special importance for neurologists and epileptologists. The writer, who suffered of epilepsy, transmitted in his texts the epileptic's universe and how the patient is perceived by the society. His novels had great influence on how epilepsy is perceived by western culture.