A Study on Pediatric Epilepsy and its main Psychiatric Comorbidities

• Author Details:   
• Niranjan Nagaraj
• Promod Kumar Berwal
• Monika Sharma
• Ayush Berwal

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Background: Epilepsy is a common neurological problem. It has deleterious effects on the developing brain leading to significant psychosocial and economic burden. It is a treatable neurological problem and judicious approach will lead to early diagnosis and treatment, thus preventing significant morbidity. This study aims to study the psychiatry comorbidities in epilepsy children.
Methods: This study was conducted as a comparative study in Department of pediatrics in collaboration with Department of Psychiatry, S.P. M.C Bikaner (Rajasthan) from 2015 January to 2015 September. All the patients and control group were evaluated on Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale All the collected data was tabulated and statically analyzed by using SPSS software.
Results: In the case group 62% of the patients were having one or more of the psychiatric problem, including major depression, anxiety, behavioral problem or low I.Q. (<80), while the same in the control group was found to be 36% with significant p values. It was found that males were having more psychiatric problem. In our study, 30.8% patients were found to have depression as compared to 12% in the control group and anxiety was found twice (36%) in the case group as compared to control group (18%).
Conclusion: Depression, anxiety and behavioral problems are present in large rates in the epileptic patients. Hence involvement of a psychiatrist while dealing with a patient of epilepsy can be done for early recognition and treatment of the disease.

Keywords: Anxiety, Bikaner, Depression, Epilepsy, Psychiatry morbidity