Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the nature and extent of depressive symptoms among patients with epilepsy.
Methods: Ninety patients were investigated over a three-month period: 42 were suffering from generalized epilepsy, 29 from focal epilepsy and 19 from undetermined epilepsy. All completed the Zung self-rating scale for assessment of the depressive symptoms.
Results: Sixty-seven patients felt stigmatized because of epilepsy (67%): 73.6% in the undetermined epilepsy group, 55.1% in the focal epilepsy group and 88% in the generalized epilepsy group. Moreover, among the 90 epileptic patients studied, symptoms of irritability, indecisiveness, personal devaluation and emptiness showed a constant increasing trend for their presence from the undetermined epilepsy group through the generalized epilepsy group to the focal epilepsy group.
Conclusions: These findings indicate that although the focal epilepsy patients felt less stigmatized, they did not differ greatly in terms of depressive symptoms, in relation to the undetermined epilepsy and generalized epilepsy patients.