Background Psychiatric disorders are important aspects of epilepsy and have received increasing attention in the last several years. Although a significant number of children are afflicted with epilepsy with psychiatric comorbidities, the actual burden was not evaluated sufficiently.

Objective To determine the types and frequency of psychiatric disorders in children with epilepsy.

Materials and Methods This hospital-based case-control study was conducted at the outpatient department of a tertiary care center in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from September 2018 to August 2019. In total, 68 epileptic children, ranging from 5 to 17 years of age, were enrolled as cases. A similar number of nonepileptic children of age, sex, and sociodemographic status matched were enrolled as control. Parent, teacher, and self-version of Bengali Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA) were used to assess the psychiatric disorders, and the diagnosis was assigned as Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)-V of Mental Disorders.

Results Higher proportion of psychiatric illness were found significantly among the cases (83.8% vs. 16.2%; p < 0.001) and broad categories of disorders, namely, neurodevelopmental (30.9% vs. 1.5%, p < 0.001), emotional (48.5% vs. 7.4%, p < 0.001) and behavioral disorder (19.1% vs. 7.4%, p = 0.043) compared with controls. There was a significant relationship between psychiatric disorders with the duration of epilepsy of the respondents (p = 0.032).

Conclusions This study result showed the significant association of psychiatric disorders with epilepsy among children and adolescent population. Thus, psychiatric disorders should be properly addressed during treatment of epilepsy.

Publication Date:
02 December 2021 (online)

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