Negative emotions in children with newly diagnosed epilepsy

Purpose: To understand the emotional predicament in children with recently diagnosed idiopathic or cryptogenic epilepsy. Methods: We used the well-tried method of structured projection for the fir st time in children with epilepsy. Thirty-six children with epilepsy, aged 7-15 years (mean age, 9.5 years) and in 35 control children aged 7-15 years (mean age, 9.4 years), attributed shame and guilt in relation to three typ es of situation (non-illness related, illness related, and epilepsy related ). Children were evaluated twice: shortly after diagnosis, before antiepile ptic drug (AED) use and after an interval of 3 months. Results: Children with epilepsy and healthy controls were similar in their way of attributing shame and guilt. However, the type of situation was of i nfluence: Both children with epilepsy and healthy children attributed more shame to incompetence due to epilepsy than to incompetence due to other ill nesses. Conclusions: increased affective problems in childhood epilepsy cannot be e xplained by excessive attribution of shame and guilt, affects known to be i mportant precursors of psychopathology, yet both healthy children and child ren with epilepsy attribute more shame to epilepsy than to Ether illnesses. Epilepsy is not like any other disease.