Psychiatric Aspect and Treatment Considerations in Epilepsy

Persons with the diagnosis of epilepsy are a high risk group for different psychiatric problems such as depression and anxiety. The present study was mainly aimed at understanding the comorbid psychiatric conditions and the factors significantly influencing the treatment. For this, 100 patients of epilepsy aged 18 to 40 years were selected from hospitals and climes of neurologist/psychiatrists to participate in the study along with 100 normal controls. Data were collected by administering Personality Assessment Inventory by Morey, 1999. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics (Mean, SD, SK, and KU) to ascertain the normalcy of data, t-ratios to compare the two groups in terms of their mean scores of eleven clinical scales and five treatment consideration scales and Discriminant Function Analysis to examine the joint contribution of all the sixteen variables in differentiation of two groups. Results revealed that patients with epilepsy scored significantly high on nine clinical scales out of eleven scale and high on all treatment consideration scales. In Discriminant Analysis, Depression, Stress, Non-Support, Anxiety, Aggression, Paranoia, Anxiety Related Disorders, Treatment Rejection and Anti-Social Features emerged most potent discriminators classifying the two groups correctly by 99.5%. Overall findings revealed the patients with epilepsy tend to develop the neurotic and psychotic spectrum disorders along with the attitudinal and behavioural tendencies which can reduce the treatment compliance among them.