I am epileptic and have mental health issues, lately i have been having a hard time retaining new info. should i be worried? i have had multiple seizures and i have been having a hard time remembering things from one minute to the next, i am really concer

In : In many cases, when people express concerns about "poor memory" it is actually poor attention that is the problem. These are complicated topics, but attention is the ability to decide or recognize which of the many things going on inside or outside the brain is important so that everything else can be filtered out. An example of good attention is the ability to read a not-so-interesting book on a commuter train filled with interesting people having interesting conversations, while interesting things flash by outside. If attention is poor, the thing one wants to remember (the not-so-interesting book, in this case) may never make it into one's memory to be stored. Both attention and memory are abilities that can be exercised and improved. However, there are many challenges to developing these skills. Some mental illnesses can cause problems with both attention and memory. Epilepsy can also create challenges, as can the drugs used to treat epilepsy and some mental illnesses. Life in the 21st century routinely features things that compete for our attention (cell phones, radios, texting, computer games, ipods) that didn't exist 100 or even 50 years ago. Then there is the modern trend of "multitasking" which is the deliberate effort to focus on multiple tasks "at once" (although some scientists who study this phenomenon doubt that it is actually possible). There are also organic brain diseases, like Alzheimer's dementia, that can affect memory and attention. A visit to a primary clinician, neurologist, or psychiatrist can be a way to start getting to the bottom of memory and attention problems. Neuropsychologists can do advanced tests of memory and attention, and neuropsychologists and speech therapists can provide therapy to improve these skills.

There : There are 10 different kinds of seizures and they fall into 2 main groups. There is a focal group of seizures which start in a spot in the brain, and there is a generalized group of seizures which start all over the whole brain simultaneously. It would be important to know which main kind you have. Within those 2 groups, there are smaller and bigger seizures. The bigger seizures are called tonic-clonic convulsions (the old french term is "grand mal" which just means "big bad"). If long lasting or repeated, these convulsions can damage memory. Or, if you have repeated focal seizures originating in the temporal lobe of the brain, over time you can lose short-term memory. The temporal lobe contains a structure called the hippocampus which encodes our short-term memory; it can be damaged by repeated temporal lobe focal seizures. Some medications can also impair your memory, as can poor sleep, depression and a host of other factors. See a neurologist regularly to make sure you are taking the proper antiepileptic medications and getting your seizures under optimal control. A neuropsychologist can do memory and cognitive tests to determine if you do have memory loss, and if so, what kind.