Gender and epilepsy : a Clinician's experience.

ABSTRACT

Women in India are greatly discriminated against if they happen to have epilepsy. Engagements are often cancelled. The parents of epileptic girls have to give heavy dowry at the time of marriage, even if the boy is handicapped. As a result, many girls do not disclose their problem before marriage. They take the medicine secretly. Epilepsy may sometimes produce problems during pregnancy and delivery, otherwise epileptic women on anti epileptic drugs, can lead a normal married, professional and social life. The stigma of epilepsy should be done away with, as we enter the 21st century.