The "burden of normality": Concepts of adjustment after surgery for seizures

Abstract

Objectives - To conceptualise the process of adjustment provoked by the sudden alleviation of chronic epilepsy by temporal lobectomy. On being rendered seizure free, the process of adjustment primarily depends on the patient's capacity to discard roles associated with chronic epilepsy and to learn to become well. This can involve a reconceptualisation of the patient's identity from chronically ill to "cured", and can give rise to a constellation of psychological, affective, behavioural, and sociological features characterised as the "burden of normality". Methods - This is a theoretical inquiry that documents the clinical phenomenology of the burden of normality by classifying its key psycho..