Community Medicine Abstracts - College of Medicine and Health ...

Project No. 68 (1995)Knowledge and Attitude toward Epilepsy among UAE PeopleStudent Authors: Fawziyah Hussain Al-MarzooqiFaculty Supervisors: Dr. N. Pugh, Dr. A. BenerAbstract:Objectives To estimate people’s knowledge about epilepsy in the UAE. To estimatepeople’s attitude toward epileptic patients in the UAE. To get a general idea about howcommon epilepsy is in the community. To establish basic educational programmesaccording to the public needs as revealed by this study.Method The study was conducted in Al Ain city. Two stage sampling technique wasperformed in this study. A standard questionnaire assessing various parameters ofknowledge and attitudes were distributed to 267 individuals.Results Regarding knowledge: 86.1% of respondents were familiar with the concept ofepilepsy in contrast to 13.8% who did not hear about it. 25.7% knew some one intheir family with epilepsy and 49.8% knew someone out of their family with thedisease. 48.6% described epilepsy solely as a disease of the brain. 38.6% relatedepilepsy to evils and demons. 51.3% related epilepsy to psychological causes. 27.3%of people though were familiar with the concept epilepsy, perceived it as a form ofabnormal screaming. 47.3% of people will call for medical help as a reaction toepileptic attack. 19.5% believed that there is no available treatment for the disease.Attitude towards epileptics were favorable regarding various aspects other thanmarriage: since only 30% did agreed to be involved in such marriage in contrary tothe others who either objected to such marriage (41.7%) or were undecided (27.8%).Conclusion People were not clear minded enough regarding causes, nature andtreatment of epilepsy. Therefore, it is very important to establish basic educationalprogrammes to increase people’s awareness of the disease.