Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Effect of psychological disorders on social functioning in people with epilepsy (PWE) is not extensively reported. We evaluate psychosocial functioning in PWE attending an outpatient clinic and aim to understand the differences in psychosocial functioning between anxiety, depression, and coexisting anxiety and depression in PWE. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective evaluation of psychosocial functioning of 324 consecutive adult PWE attending outpatient epilepsy clinic was done using self-reported Washington Psychosocial Seizure Inventory. The study population was divided in four groups - without psychological disorders, anxiety, depression, and both anxiety and depression. RESULTS: The mean age of study population was 25.90 +/- 6.22 years. Anxiety was noted in 73 (22.5%), depression in 60 (18.5%), and both anxiety and depression were seen in 70 (21.6%) and the rest had normal psychosocial function. There were no significant differences across all the four sub-groups for sociodemographics. Psychosocial functioning did not differ significantly between PWE with normal psychosocial function and PWE with anxiety alone. However, psychosocial functioning scores were worse in PWE with depression and PWE with both anxiety and depression when compared to PWE with normal psychosocial function. CONCLUSION: In the present study of PWE attending an outpatient epilepsy clinic, one-fifth of PWE had both anxiety and depression. Psychosocial functioning in PWE with anxiety was similar to otherwise healthy/normal PWE, whereas PWE with depression showed poor psychosocial functioning. Role of psychological interventions on psychosocial aspects of epilepsy should be studied extensively in future.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open
access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting
copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given
appropriate credit.
Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or
adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
)
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which
permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial
purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of
adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original
work is properly cited.
