Epileptics

This is a list of notable people who have, or had, the medical condition epilepsy. Following from that, there is a short list of people who have received a speculative, retrospective diagnosis of epilepsy. Finally there is a substantial list of people who are often wrongly believed to have had epilepsy.

Epilepsy and greatness

A possible link between epilepsy and greatness has fascinated biographers and physicians for centuries. In his ''Treatise on Epilepsy'', the French 17th century physician Jean Taxil refers to Aristotle's "famous epileptics". This list includes Heracles, Ajax, Bellerophon, Socrates, Plato, Empedocles, Maracus of Syracuse, and the Sibyls. However, historian of medicine Owsei Temkin argues that Aristotle had in fact made a list of melancholics and had only associated Heracles with the "Sacred Disease". Taxil goes on to add his own names: Roman Emperor Caligula, Drusus (tribune of the Roman people), and Petrarch. Neurologist John Hughes concluded that the majority of famous people alleged to have epilepsy did not in fact have this condition.

Certain diagnosis

The following categorized chronological list contains only those people for whom a firm and uncontested diagnosis was made during their lifetime.

Acting

Leadership, politics and royalty

Music

Sport

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, Buddy Bell
, born 1951
, A major league baseball player and manager.
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, Bobby Jones
, born 1951
, A Hall of Fame basketball player who developed epilepsy and a heart problem as an adult, but persevered with his game.
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, Vyacheslav Lemeshev
, 1952–1996
, An Olympic boxer from the USSR. The youngest Olympic champion in boxing history, at the age of 28 he was already a sick person. Brain vascular atrophy developed, vision was severely impaired, liver problems were encountered and psoriasis and epilepsy.
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, Terry Marsh
, born 1958
, A boxer who was IBF world light-welterweight champion. His diagnosis of epilepsy in 1987, aged 29, forced him into retirement undefeated.
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, Greg Walker
, born 1959
, A major league baseball player who collapsed on field with a tonic-clonic seizure. He had a further seizure in hospital that night and took anticonvulsant medication for the next two years. Walker had a childhood history of seizures until the age of 4.
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, Florence Griffith Joyner
, 1959–1998
, A track and field athlete with world records in the 100 m and 200 m. She developed seizures in her thirties, possibly due to a cavernous angioma that was discovered on autopsy. She died from asphyxiation after a grand mal seizure while asleep.
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, Wally Lewis
, born 1959
, One of Australia's greatest rugby league players, national team captain 1984–89. After retirement from the sport, he became a television sports presenter, but became disoriented during a live-to-air broadcast in late 2006. Medical tests revealed that he had epilepsy.
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, Paul Wade
, born 1962
, Former Australian national Football (soccer) player and television sports commentator. Wade had epilepsy all his life but was only diagnosed as an adult. He kept it secret until he had a seizure on live television in 2001. Drugs weren't controlling the seizures so, in 2002, he had surgery to remove a scar in his brain. He is now seizure free.
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, Marion Clignet
, born 1964
, A Franco-American cyclist who found that she has epilepsy at the age of 22. She was shunned by the U.S. cycling federation and subsequently rode in the colors of France. She has since won six world titles, two Olympic silver medals, and numerous races worldwide.
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, Maggie McEleny
, born 1965
, Four times British Paralympic swimmer, winning 3 gold, 5 silver and 7 bronze. McEleny has paraplegia and epilepsy. In 2000, she was made an MBE and awarded a Golden Jubilee Award by the British Epilepsy Association.
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, Mikhail Tatarinov
, born 1966
, A retired Russian ice hockey defenceman. Alcohol withdrawal epilepsy seizures.
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, Matt Crooks
, Born 1994
, British footballer affectionately nicknamed "Tree" due to his height. First had a seizure at 18 and works closely with the Peter Doody Foundation
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, Hervé Boussard
, 1966–2013
, An Olympic cyclist of France who won a bronze medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics. He died from an epileptic seizure.
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, Jonty Rhodes
, born 1969
, A cricketer who is involved with Epilepsy South Africa.
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, Tom Smith
, 1971–2022
, Former Scottish international and Northampton Saints rugby player. He had epilepsy since the age of 18. His seizures occurred only at night, during sleep. He was a patron of the Scottish epilepsy charity, Enlighten.
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, Ronde Barber
, born 1975
, A former American football player who played cornerback with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
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, Tiki Barber
, born 1975
, A former American football player, who played running back for the New York Giants.
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, Alan Faneca
, born 1976
, An American football guard in the pro football Hall of Fame. The nine-time All-Pro was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 15 and takes the anticonvulsant carbamazepine, which successfully controls his seizures.
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, Samari Rolle
, born 1976
, A former American football cornerback who played for the Baltimore Ravens.
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, Chanda Gunn
, born 1980
, A goalie in the US 2006 Winter Olympic women's hockey team. Gunn was diagnosed with juvenile absence epilepsy at the age of 9, which was treated with valproic acid. Epilepsy meant that she had to give up her childhood sports of swimming and surfing, but these were soon replaced with hockey.
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, Emma Beamish
, born 1982
, A member of the Ireland women's cricket team. Seizure-free since 2018 Beamish has spoken publicly about her anxiety that seizures may re-occur and her decision not to have children as a result.
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, Jason Snelling
, born 1983
, An American football player with the Atlanta Falcons.
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, Davis Tarwater
, born 1984
, An Olympic swimmer for the United States who had epilepsy as a child
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, Andrei Kostitsyn
, born 1985
, A Belarusian professional ice hockey forward for HC Dinamo Minsk of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). The hockey player suffered several serious epilepsy seizures in one month. He was treated in Canada in 2004.
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, Leon Legge
, born 1985
, An English professional footballer, who currently plays for Port Vale as a central defender. His epilepsy is currently controlled.
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, Dai Greene
, born 1986
, A Welsh hurdler who specialises in the 400 metres hurdles event. Greene is the current European, Commonwealth and World Champion.
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, Katharine Ford
, born 1986
, An Ultra-marathon cyclist and Indoor Track Cycling four time world record holder, who was diagnosed with epilepsy aged 9 before undergoing major transformative brain surgery to control her condition.
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, Lance Franklin
, born 1987
, An Australian Football League player who has had Epilepsy since 2015.
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, Jeremy Jeffress
, born 1987
, A baseball pitcher named as an all-star in 2018 with the Milwaukee Brewers.
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, Michael McKillop
, born 1990
, An Irish middle distance paralympic runner with a mild form of cerebral palsy and epilepsy who has won Gold at the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Paralympic Games.
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, Viktorija Senkutė
, born 1996
, Lithuanian rower, 2024 Olympic bronze medallist. At the age of 15 she was diagnosed with focal, or partial, epilepsy after she started experiencing convulsions during the night.
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, Briar Nolet
, born 1998
, A Canadian dancer who competed in '' World of Dance'' and stars in '' The Next Step''. After having a seizure during a dance rehearsal, she was misdiagnosed with anxiety, but two years later, a neurologist confirmed she has epilepsy.
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, Mike Towell
, 1991–2016
, A Scottish professional boxer from Dundee, Scotland. Who died after fight 'should have never been in the ring' after having epileptic seizures
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, Justin Fields
, born 1999
, A first round pick in the 2021 NFL draft by the Chicago Bears. His condition was made public prior to the draft.
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Art and writing

Miscellaneous

Retrospective diagnosis

The following people were not diagnosed with epilepsy during their lifetime. A retrospective diagnosis is speculative and, as detailed below, can be wrong.

Religious figures

There is a long-standing notion that epilepsy and religion are linked, and it has been speculated that many religious figures had temporal lobe epilepsy. The temporal lobes generate the feeling of "I", and give a sense of familiarity or strangeness to the perceptions of the senses. The temporal lobes and adjacent anterior insular cortex seem to be involved in mystical experiences, and in the change in personality that may result from such experiences.

Raymond Bucke's '' Cosmic Consciousness'' (1901) contains several case-studies of people who have realized "cosmic consciousness". James Leuba's ''The psychology of religious mysticism'' noted that "among the dread diseases that afflict humanity there is only one that interests us quite particularly; that disease is epilepsy." Several of Bucke's cases are also mentioned in J.E. Bryant's 1953 book, ''Genius and Epilepsy'', which has a list of more than 20 people that combines the great and the mystical.

Slater and Beard renewed the interest in TLE and religious experience in the 1960s. Dewhurst and Beard (1970) described six cases of TLE-patients who underwent sudden religious conversions. They placed these cases in the context of several western saints who had a sudden conversion, who were or may have been epileptic. Dewhurst and Beard described several aspects of conversion experiences, and did not favor one specific mechanism.

Norman Geschwind described behavioral changes related to temporal lobe epilepsy in the 1970s and 1980s.
Now called Geschwind syndrome, he defined a cluster of specific personality characteristics often found in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, which include increased religiosity. Evidence of Geschwind syndrome has been identified in some religious figures, in particular pronounced religiosity and hypergraphia (excessive writing). However, critics note that these characteristics can be the result of any illness, and are not sufficiently descriptive for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, in the 1980s and 1990s, also found a relationship between the right temporal lobe and mystical experience, but also found that pathology or brain damage is only one of many possible causal mechanisms for these experiences. He questioned the earlier accounts of religious figures with temporal lobe epilepsy, noticing that "very few true examples of the ecstatic aura and the temporal lobe seizure had been reported in the world scientific literature prior to 1980". According to Fenwick, "It is likely that the earlier accounts of temporal lobe epilepsy and temporal lobe pathology and the relation to mystic and religious states owes more to the enthusiasm of their authors than to a true scientific understanding of the nature of temporal lobe functioning."

The occurrence of intense religious feelings in people with epilepsy in general is considered rare, with an incident rate of about 2–3%. Sudden religious conversion, together with visions, has been documented in only a small number of individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy. The occurrence of religious experiences in TLE-patients may as well be explained by religious attribution, due to the background of these patients. Nevertheless, the neurological research of mystical experiences is a growing field of research, searching for specific neurological explanations of mystical experiences. Study of ecstatic seizures may provide clues for the neurological mechanisms giving rise to mystical experiences, such as the anterior insular cortex, which is involved in self-awareness and subjective certainty.

People listed below are not necessarily known to have epilepsy nor indicate a scholarly consensus in favour of epilepsy; merely that such a diagnosis has been suggested.

Misdiagnosis

Many famous people are incorrectly recorded as having epilepsy. In some cases there is no evidence at all to justify a diagnosis of epilepsy. In others, the symptoms have been misinterpreted. In some, the seizures were provoked by other causes, such as acute illness or alcohol withdrawal.

No evidence

The following people are often reported to have had epilepsy but there is no evidence that they had any attacks or illnesses that even resembled epilepsy.

Misdiagnosis by association

Many individuals have been mistakenly recorded as having epilepsy due to an association with someone (real or fictional) who did have epilepsy, or something similar.

Provoked seizures

The following people may have had one or more epileptic seizures but since the seizures were provoked, they do not result in a diagnosis of epilepsy:

Similar conditions

There are many conditions that produce paroxysmal attacks or events. These events (especially in historical, non-medical literature such as biographies) are often called fits, seizures or convulsions. Those terms do not exclusively apply to epilepsy and such events are sometimes categorised as non-epileptic seizures. When studied in detail, the attacks were more fully described as "fits of spleen", "seized by pain", "convulsed with anguish", etc.

Notes and references

Sources

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Lists of people by medical condition

{{DEFAULTSORT:Epilepsy, List Of People With