The Relationship between Mothers Epilepsy-related Knowledge and their Healthcare Practices and Attitudes, Alexandria, Egypt

Maternal knowledge about childhood epilepsy is an important aspect affecting their healthcare practices and attitudes towards their children. Objective: Assess level of mothers knowledge about childhood epilepsy, to investigate its relation to their healthcare practices and attitudes, and to identify socio-demographic, educational and disease-related factors associated with mothers’ knowledge level. Setting: The study was carried out in Smouha Health Insurance Child Mental Health Clinic affiliated to the Health Insurance Organization, Alexandria–Egypt. Subjects: The subjects of present study comprised of 308 mothers attending the clinic for follow up of their epileptic children. Tool: A predesigned questionnaire was used to assess mothers epilepsy-related knowledge, practices and attitudes. Results: The majority of mothers (80.5%) showed unsatisfactory knowledge. Most of them (91.9%) agreed on observing the child all the time for safety; showed good compliance with children s medications for dose (83.4%) and time (72.7%). More than half (54.2%) did not treat their children as normal ones (overprotection/rejection). The higher level of mother s knowledge was associated significantly with disagreement on observing the child all the time (P= 0.000), and with medication compliance (P= 0.034). Only grand malseizures predicted higher level of mothers knowledge (B= 0.961, P= 0.015). Conclusion: Mothers knowledge about epilepsy was considerably low. Higher knowledge level was associated with positive attitudes and practices. Recommendations: Integrating an educational component to healthcare plans of epileptic children is recommended.