ABSTRACT
Background: Neuropsychological deficits are common among epileptic children and these deficits of epileptic children may be influenced by factors like age, gender, frequency of seizures, duration of seizures, age at onset of seizures, type of seizures and family history. Material and Method: A non experimental research design was utilized to assess the Neuropsychological Deficits among Sample of 60 children with epilepsy, with age group of 8-16 years, attending outpatient neurology unit of Christian Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana, Punjab. Symptom checklist -90 was used to assess the psychological deficits and Performance of intelligence to assess neurological deficits was assessed with the help of Bhatia’s Battery. Analysis and interpretation of data was done by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: Out of 60 patients, 60% of epileptic children were free of psychological deficits, 36.7% had mild and 3.3% had moderate level of psychological deficits. Children had maximum psychological deficits score (50.08%) in anger hostility related symptoms and least (12.75%) in phobic anxiety symptoms. 43% of epileptic children had borderline and dull normal IQ level which indirectly represented neurological deficits, maximum in cognition i.e. 43.33% and lowest in loss of coordination or loss of fine motor control. Epileptic children had more mean percentage neurological deficits score but with little difference in both Koh’s block design test (68.6%) and in ‘Pattern Drawing Test’ (68.1%) i.e. they had more problems related to the analytical- synthetics ability and the lowest mean percentage neurological deficits score (19.2%) were in “Immediate Memory Test”. Conclusion: Epileptic patients suffers from various degrees of neuropsychological problems, which if could be recognized early and intervened in time can further reduce the disability among these children’s and will lower the psychosocial impact of epilepsy at large.