The social and behavioural functioning of people with mental handicaps attending adult training centres: A COMPARISON OF THOSE WITH AND WITHOUT EPILEPSY

Abstract

This controlled study investigates possible psychosocial deficits associated with the “double handicap” of mental handicap plus epilepsy in a sizeable sample of adults with mental handicaps living in the community. Results indicate that social and behavioural problems, additional to those associated with mental handicap in itself, are largely confined to the relatively small sub‐group of people who have poorly controlled epilepsy. These results are discussed in relation to deficiencies in the socialisation process.

Antiepileptic polypharmacy, psychosocial behaviour and locus of control orientation among mentally handicapped adults living in the community

“…The present authors have shown elsewhere (Gillies et al, 1989) that the social interaction of patients who have frequent seizures is subject to the additional incursion of behaviour problems. Thus, uncontrolled epilepsy is a high risk factor for psychosocial disturbance.…”

“…The resultant group of 65 subjects with epilepsy (male n=31, female n=34; mean age=30-33 years, S.D.=9-69) included a high frequency occurrence of seizures group (HFE) (n=21) who had a seizure frequency of more than one per month in the preceding year. The remaining epileptic group (n=44) had seizure rates of less than or equal to one per month over the same time period and are referred to as the low frequency occurrence of seizures group (LFE) (see Gillies et al, 1989, for full details).…”

“…This result is indicative of the strength of the effects of antiepileptic drugs upon the global behaviour of patients. It is interesting that the contribution of drug number exceeds that of seizure frequency which has been shown to have considerable influence upon the psychosocial functioning of mentally handicapped adults with epilepsy (Gillies et al, 1989).…”

“…Additional behavioural disturbance associated with the 'double handicap' of epilepsy and mental handicap has been a focus of research attention (Maehle & Strondjord, 1984;Gillies et al, 1989). However, those effects of drug treatment which relate specifically to the psychosocial dimension have received relatively little consideration, despite frequent antiepileptic prescription (35%) (Fischbacher, 1987) and reports of excessive antiepileptic prescription among mentally handicapped patients with epilepsy (Beghi et al, 1987).…”

Association between epilepsy and challenging behaviour in adults with intellectual disabilities: systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Of the 34 papers, 19 included participants with and without epilepsy, as their authors compared the rates of challenging behaviour in these two groups to assess an association between challenging behaviour and epilepsy (Table 1). Of these, nine studies [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] had equal numbers of participants in both groups and the groups were matched on various demographic variables. The rest (n = 10) 12,45-53 were prevalence studies of challenging behaviour in adults with intellectual disabilities that included a number of participants with epilepsy (around 22% of the cohort).…”