Epilepsy Journal

Prevalence of Depression and its Associated Factors among Adult Epileptic Patients Following Treatment at Selected Public Health Facilities of Bench Maji Zone, South West Ethiopia, 2017

Abstract

Abiy Tadesse Angelo

Background: Depression among epileptic patients has multiple effects: poor quality of life, increased seizure frequency, risk of suicide, increased health care cost and worsened side effects of anti-epileptic medications. It is often under recognized and untreated among these patients.
Objective: To assess the prevalence of depression and associated factors among epileptic patient on treatment follow up at selected public health facilities of Bench Maji zone, south west Ethiopia, 2017.
Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted in selected public health facilities of Bench Maji zone from March 3- April 3/2017. Simple random sampling was used. Data was collected through face to face interview and analyzed using frequency, percentage and binary logistic.
Result: In this study a total of 244 participants were involved, and the response rate was 98.8%. The overall prevalence of depression was 51.2%. Of these, 60%, 36%, and 4% of the patients were found to have mild, moderate and severe depression respectively. Low educational status (AOR=2.5, CI (1.32, 4.78)), Seizure frequencies ≥ 3 per month (AOR=3.06, CI (1.412, 6.65)), Age onset of epilepsy ≤ 11 years (AOR=4.58, CI (1.94, 10.82)), low anti-epileptic drug adherence (AOR=4.81, CI (2.32, 9.97)) and poor knowledge about epilepsy (AOR=2.77, CI (1.5,5.12)) were found to be independent predictors of depression among epileptic patients.
Conclusion and recommendation: Considerable amount of epileptic patients had depression that may predispose them to different health related problems. Low educational status, seizure frequencies, age at onset of the epilepsy, low antiepileptic drug adherence and poor knowledge about epilepsy were found to be contributing factor to the depression.