Psychosocial Stressors among Epileptic Children

Abstract

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder in childhood stage and characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures attack due to excessive and abnormal neuronal discharges. It causes a significant sociocultural and psychological burden to both epileptic children and their families compared with other chronic disorders which has complex implications regarding children’s intellectual, psychological, and social development (Ahmed, 2019). In other words, epilepsy is characterized by its episodic, unpredictability, and chronic nature which have a negative impact on the children's psychological, social, and school domains, and lastly can lead to psychological and social stressors and adjustment related problems. Actually, the comprehensive care should be directed to determine and manage the medical and psychosocial problems related to epilepsy for epileptic children and their caregivers (Rani and Thomas, 2019). Various new researches have described stressors among caregivers of epileptic children. However, none of these researches has focused particularly on the experienced stressors among the epileptic children themselves. So, lack of researches concerning epileptic children’s stressors constitutes a major gap in the literature.