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Population and Health Students Knowledge, Attitude and Perception towards Epilepsy Patients

Abstract

Ebenezer Kwesi Armah-Ansah, Kenneth Fosu Oteng and Joycelyn Boatemaa Affum

Purpose: This study was carried out to determine knowledge and attitude towards epilepsy among University of Cape Coast Population and Health students, Ghana.
Methods: This is study was conducted among Population and Health students in the University of Cape Coast by distributing questionnaires constructed in English language. Questionnaires were administered to 200 randomly selected students.
Results: Out of the 200 questionnaires collected and analyzed, majority of the students (97.5%) have heard of epilepsy as a disease with the common source of information coming from the University teaching (66.0%). Most of the students (78.0%) reported that epilepsy is a psychiatric disease and about 69% believe that the disease is not treatable and a significant number of the respondents (79.5%) indicated that it is a hereditary disease. The negative attitudes reported by the students include people with epilepsy should not marry close relatives of theirs (53.5%) or shake hands with epileptic patients (54%) while 83% reported that epileptics should not have children and 80.5% indicated not to study or work with epileptics.
Conclusion: Students have knowledge about the disease but they have bad or negative attitudes towards epilepsy which need to be improved by enhancing more information through education to improve their knowledge.