Clinical ResearchEducational video and story as effective interventions reducing epilepsy-related stigma among children

- We introduced two interventions aiming to reduce epilepsy-related stigma in children.
- Both video and story led to a long-term increase of knowledge about epilepsy.
- Stigma was measured by a validated Czech version of Stigma Scale of Epilepsy.
- Stigma was significantly reduced as a result of both interventions.

Stigma has been related to epilepsy since ancient times. Despite the importance of this issue, only a few interventions focusing on the reduction of epilepsy-related stigma may be found in the literature. Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two interventions focused on the reduction of epilepsy-related stigma in children aged 9-11 years. The first group of children involved in the study (n1 = 89) completed the 23-item Czech version of the SSE (Stigma Scale of Epilepsy) questionnaire and an 11-item multiple-choice knowledge test, then watched a video and completed the same questionnaire and test immediately after the intervention. The same procedure was used for the second group (n2 = 93) where a story was read by an instructor. Both groups were retested 6 months later using the same methods. Both interventions resulted in long-term decrease of epilepsy-related stigma - the average value on SSE decreased from 55.15 points at baseline testing to 43.28 points in the 6-month follow-up for the case of the video (p < 0.001) and from 48.68 points to 36.97 points for the case of the story (p < 0.001). Knowledge about epilepsy was also significantly improved with the average result in the knowledge test increasing from 6.58 to 9.09 points in case of the video (p < 0.001) and from 6.88 to 8.99 points in case of the story (p < 0.001). The results showed that both aforementioned interventions were significant and effective ways to reduce epilepsy-related stigma in the given age group.