Emotion/Behavior Problems, Neuropsychological Functioning, and Parental Adjustment in Children and Adolescents With Epilepsy

Child and adolescents with epilepsy often have comorbid conditions such as emotion/behavior problems and attention deficit, which usually result in great impact on their individual functioning and their family. Neurological factors (e.g. central neural system disease, mental retardation, and epilepsy factors), demographic factors (low socioeconomic, age, gender), family factors, child's attitude to epilepsy, parental psychopathology and their attitude may associate with the presentation of behavior and attention in child and adolescents with epilepsy. In addition, these risk factors may affect via some pathways. Previous studies were conducted mainly in Caucasians, and few researches were conducted in Chinese population. Furthermore, previous studies demonstrated inconsistent findings regarding the related risk factors for epilepsy. Therefore, it is important to conduct a study investigating systematically the potential risk factors for epilepsy.

This is a cross-sectional and hospital -based study. The participants include 80 child and adolescents who are 6 to 18 years old and 80 control subjects. The instruments include the Chinese version of Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), Child Attitude Toward Illness Scale (CATIS), the Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham, version IV (SNAP-IV), Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), Family APGAR, Chinese Health Questionnaire (CHQ-12), impact of childhood illness scale, drug compliance scale. We will also collect related information from chart record, and then analyze for emotion/behavior presentation and to identify the risk factors for epilepsy.

We expect that this study will reach the following objectives:

1. to understand the characteristics and prevalence of emotion/behavior problems and attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome in child and adolescents with epilepsy.
2. to investigate significant risk factors and the possible pathogenic pathway
3. to refer child and parents who have emotion problems
4. to combine research and service across departments (departments of neurology and psychiatry )
5. to improve worldwide understanding of epilepsy by the results of this study