Focus on psychological disorders in children with epilepsy

  In recent years, domestic and foreign research data show that there is a rising trend of psychological disorders in children, and abnormal manifestations caused by psychological factors can reach 15%-20% in school-age children, while obvious psychological disorders account for about 3%-5%. Epilepsy is a chronic disease of the nervous system, and for a long time antiepileptic drugs are mainly applied to control seizures, while the psychological problems of patients are often neglected. The author has been engaged in clinical work of pediatric neurological diseases for a long time, and has communicated a lot with epileptic patients and parents, and found that many children with epilepsy have psychological disorders, which should attract the attention of medical workers and society.  The main manifestations of psychological disorders in children with epilepsy 1, emotional abnormalities: epilepsy is a chronic disease of the nervous system, requiring long-term treatment, or even lifelong medication, the disease causes inconvenience to patients, mental and psychological harm, patients are nervous, anxious, fear of seizures, fear of seizure injury, being ridiculed, and even afraid to go to public places alone, and fear of long-term medication to make themselves stupid, while the discrimination and prejudice in society In addition, there is social discrimination and prejudice that people with epilepsy are inferior to others.  The heavy burden of the disease makes patients depressed, depressed, anxious, and have low self-esteem, and if parents, teachers and classmates can not understand, they feel that there is no way out, discouraged, and even anxious and light-hearted.  2. Behavioral abnormalities: Due to epilepsy itself, side effects of epilepsy drugs and family and social attitudes toward children with epilepsy, many factors cause behavioral abnormalities in children with epilepsy, manifesting as personality changes, stubbornness, hyperactivity, impulsiveness, decreased social skills, compulsive behavior, aggressive behavior (physical and verbal) and even self-harm.  3. Cognitive impairment: Some children with epilepsy are accompanied by different degrees of learning difficulties, cannot finish elementary school and need to go to special needs schools. Their intelligence, memory, reading ability, phonetic recognition and learning math ability are poor, they cannot concentrate on learning, memory loss and difficulty in learning new things, some of them are not agile, have poor spatial thinking and poor orientation ability.  Psychological treatment of psychological disorders in children with epilepsy 1, psychological counseling: the purpose of psychological counseling is to help patients and their families learn to deal with the emotional reactions to the disease and increase social adaptability.  The consultant should have a rigorous scientific attitude, must be enthusiastic, sincere, helpful, good at listening to the patient, put themselves in the patient’s shoes, establish a good doctor-patient relationship, make a qualitative and quantitative comprehensive assessment of the patient’s situation, targeted, step-by-step psychological counseling, especially for parents, some parents do not want people around them to know that their child has epilepsy, and do not want the child himself to know, fearing Some parents do not want people around them to know about their child’s epilepsy, nor do they want the child to know about it, for fear of stigma and prejudice, but this can ultimately be harmful because others do not understand the child’s condition and the child will not protect himself or herself.  The parents’ anxiety and overprotection is understandable, but it is one of the reasons that cause and aggravate the child’s psychological disorder. Therefore, it is necessary to counsel the parents of children with epilepsy, especially the mothers, to establish a correct understanding of epilepsy and eliminate their psychological disorder in order to better cooperate with the treatment.  2. Behavioral therapy: Patients learn how to deal with daily stress, learn self-control of seizures and relaxation training, understand seizure aura and factors that may increase seizures, tell patients how to avoid seizures, and instruct patients on techniques to block and inhibit seizures during the prodromal and aura periods. Some patients can perform relaxation and deep breathing exercises before seizures, which can reduce seizures and alleviate psychological barriers.