The psychological and social impact of epilepsy

ABSTRACT

Epilepsy has many non-medical effects on the people with epilepsy, their family and community. To ensure that epilepsy is fully controlled requires a specialist neurologist or paediatrician with up-todate detailed knowledge to diagnose and prescribe treatment, a general practitioner to supervise dayto-day medical management and an epilepsy specialist community worker to provide psychosocial support, information and education to help maintain quality of life. By working together as a team, the specialist, the general practitioner and the epilepsy specialist community worker can ensure that the psychological and social impact of epilepsy is reduced to a minimum.