Prevalence and quality of anxiety in patients with epilepsy

• State anxiety was significantly higher in patients with epilepsy than in the control group.
• Also, a higher trait anxiety score was reported in the case group compared with the control group.
• There were no significant differences between state or trait anxiety and the individual items in patients with epilepsy.
• No relationship was found between state or trait anxiety and individual variables such as marriage, employment, urbanity, and literacy in both groups.

BackgroundDepression and anxiety are the most frequent psychiatric disorders identified in patients with epilepsy. We aimed to determine the prevalence of state and trait anxiety in patients with epilepsy compared with people without epilepsy.MethodsWe recruited patients and healthy controls in the outpatient neurology clinic of Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Iran, during 2011. Eighty-four patients with epilepsy and 168 healthy persons from relatives of the patients in the case group were recruited and filled out the inventory. The State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was used to measure anxiety. After selection of participants and neurological evaluation, all subjects were clinically interviewed at the outpatient clinic of neurology. Data were analyzed using SPSS software, version 16. Fisher's exact and chi-square tests were used for nominal variables, and the t-test was used for anxiety scores.ResultsThe average ages of the patients in the case and control groups were 28 and 27.5 years, respectively. State anxiety was significantly higher in patients with epilepsy than in the control group (p = 0.042). Also, a higher trait anxiety score was reported in the case group compared with the control group (p = 0.009).ConclusionThe rates of both state and trait anxiety were higher in patients in the case group. It appears that anxiety in epilepsy is not just a reaction to a stressful situation, and there may be genetic or temperamental factors that contribute to the relationship between epilepsy and anxiety.