Investigation and analysis of psychological status of 1 242 epilepsy patients in rural areas

GUAN Xiao; WANG Xuan; WANG Xiaomu; WANG Yuanyuan; JIANG Wen

doi:10.13276/j.issn.2097-1656.2025.03.013

Abstract：Objective To explore the psychological status and influencing factors of 1 242 epilepsy patients in rural areas of Shaanxi Province.Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on patients with convulsive epilepsy who were enrolled in the Shaanxi Province Rural Epilepsy Prevention and Management Project from February 2012 to September 2020.The sociodemographic data and seizure symptomatology information of epilepsy patients were collected through questionnaire survey,and the epilepsy-related psychological burden score was assessed.K-means clustering algorithm in the field of machine learning was used to divide the epilepsy patients into low psychological burden and high psychological burden groups based on the scores of epilepsy-related psychological burden.Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the influencing factors of epilepsy-related psychological burden.Results A total of 1 242 patients participated in this study,and 1 109(89.3％)patients showed varying degrees of epilepsy-related psychological burden,with the most common concern being epilepsy recurrence,accounting for 77.4％.There were 454(36.6％)patients in the high psychological burden group,with the most concerning issue being accidental injury,accounting for 96.9％.Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that unmarried/divorced status,seizure frequency≥24 times/year before treatment,annual family income＜36 000 yuan,and uncontrolled seizures in the past year were risk factors for higher psychological burden in epilepsy patients in rural areas(P＜0.05).Conclusion Nearly 90％of the patients show varying degrees of epilepsy-related psychological burden.Marital status,annual family income,and the condition of seizures are significantly correlated with epilepsy-related psychological burden in rural patients.It is necessary to strengthen epilepsy knowledge education and provide social support and psychological intervention for rural patients to improve their quality of life.