Kids with epilepsy ‘more likely to have psychiatric symptoms’
March 26th, 2011 - 2:57 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Mar 26 (ANI): A new study has revealed that children with epilepsy are more likely to have psychiatric symptoms, with gender a determining factor in their development.
Findings showed that girls had more emotional problems, while boys had more hyperactivity/inattention problems and issues regarding peer relationships.
The current study used data collected by the Norwegian Health Services Research Centre in a 2002 health profile questionnaire. For children in the 8-13 years of age group, there were 14,699 (response rate of 78 percent) parents who completed the questionnaire.
To assess psychiatric symptoms, researchers used the parent report of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) which included questions covering four problem domains-emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity-inattention, and peer problems-and prosocial behavior. The SDQ scores were classified as normal, borderline, or abnormal.
Based upon parent’s response to the health questionnaire, 111 children were identified with epilepsy (a frequency of 0.8 percent), of which 110 completed the questions included in the SDQ (64 boys and 46 girls).
Researchers found that children with epilepsy had a significantly higher frequency of psychiatric symptoms (38 percent) compared with healthy controls (17 percent). Boys had a higher risk of psychiatric symptoms than girls in both the epilepsy population and in controls.
Additional risk factors were low socioeconomic status, having another chronic disease (asthma/diabetes) and epilepsy. Having or having had epilepsy was a much stronger risk factor of developing psychiatric problems in girls, whereas boys with epilepsy seemed almost as affected by low socioeconomic status as having epilepsy.
“Multiple risk factors contribute to the high prevalence of psychiatric symptoms, differently in boys and girls, it seems,” concluded Dr. Alfstad.
The study is published in Epilepsia. (ANI)
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Tags: boys and girls, development findings, emotional symptoms, having epilepsy, health profile, health questionnaire, health services research, health services research centre, higher frequency, inattention, low socioeconomic status, peer relationships, problem domains, profile questionnaire, psychiatric problems, psychiatric symptoms, risk factor, risk factors, sdq, strengths and difficulties questionnaire