Coping patterns of mothers of children with epilepsy

ABSTRACT

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder in childhood Mothers of children with a chronic condition such as epilepsy have to cope with the burden of daily related to the illness and the constant adjustment to the changing demands of the chronic condition. to assess coping patterns of mothers of children with epilepsy through Assessing mother's awareness and practice regarding childhood epilepsy, and detecting mother's coping patterns toward their children with epilepsy. A descriptive research design was utilized in this study, the convenience sample consisted of 120 epileptic children and their accompanying mothers recruited from the epileptic outpatient Clinic and the neurological pediatric out patient clinic affiliated to Ain Shams University hospital. Data were collected using questionnaire regarding knowledge and practice about childhood epilepsy, and coping scale to assess maternal coping toward their epileptic children. The mean age of the mothers' was 34.341 +/- 5.850 years. 71.7% of them had poor knowledge, 59.2% not done practice related to epilepsy disease. A statistically significant correlation was found between problems-oriented coping used by mother of epileptic children and her knowledge [P= 0.000], and practice toward childhood epilepsy [P=. 0.005]. The majority of the studied mothers were having poor knowledge and practice related to their epileptic children, particularly in regard to types of epilepsy and first aid management of acute seizures. Three fifth of them tended to cope by always using emotional oriented coping. Further researches are needed to determine the barriers that affect negatively the mothers of epileptic children coping patterns with their affected children. Conduct Continuous various educational programs for the mothers of epileptic children, based on needs assessment to raise their awareness regarding epilepsy