Did you recognize her seizure?

When most people think about seizures, they think about the kind that causes the person having the seizure to fall down and convulse. However, many seizures are not convulsive. In fact, many types of seizures are very hard to detect. Among the over 20 types of seizures, some are easier to recognize than others.

The schoolgirl in this PSA was having an "Absence" seizure which is taken from the French word "to be absent". One common misconception about absence seizures is that the person is assumed to be daydreaming, to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or to be deliberately ignoring instructions. For this reason, absence seizures in children often go undetected.

Absence Seizures

Absence (also sometimes still called petit mal) seizures produce momentary (a few seconds) loss of awareness, upward rolling of the eyes, sometimes accompanied by movements of the face, such as chewing movements or blinking. The child may drop what they are holding. The absence seizures may be frequent and may even occur up to 200 times a day. During an absence seizure, the child is out of touch but the quickly return to full awareness once the absence seizure stops.

Impact and misdiagnosis

Attentive and knowledgeable teachers are sometimes the first to pick-up that a child is having absence seizures and should promptly talk to the parents. However, when a teacher and/or parent is not knowledgeable about epilepsy, the absence seizures are sometimes mistaken for daydreaming or inattention in the classroom, and children are even sometimes mistakenly punished for being "spacey" or daydreaming when they are actually having "absent" episodes over which they have no control.

Absence seizures differ from daydreaming in that they interrupt ongoing activity, including learning. Sometimes children with absence are also misdiagnosed with learning problems.

Management at school and home

Make sure the child did not miss any key parts of the lesson. Usually this can be done by repeating information and instructions.