Perceptions of epilepsy among school teachers in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Background: Epilepsy is the most common neurological problem of childhood, and its incidence is highest in the first decade of life. Children with epilepsy are burdened by the limitations it imposes on them such as psychological stress (especially when they have seizures in school), loss of school hours and possible effect of the seizure itself on cognitive function. Lack of information and inappropriate beliefs contribute to poor attitude towards epileptics so I sought to determine the perception (attitudes and knowledge) of epilepsy amongst primary school teachers.Methods: This was a questionnaire-based, cross-sectional study of 226 school teachers from five randomly selected primary schools in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.Results: About half of the respondents (118; 52.21%) had post secondary education, while 40% of them are graduates with bachelors' degree in education. The attitude of the teachers was scored as negative or positive depending on the response to an attitude question; knowledge was graded as poor and good based on the response to a particular knowledge based question. 201(88.94%) were of the opinion that epileptic children pose a danger to the public. 192 (84.96%) felt that epilepsy was more of a spiritual illness than medical. All, 226 (100%) of the participants requested for more information about the disease.Conclusions: Knowledge of epilepsy amongst the primary school teachers was poor. The attitude of these teachers towards epilepsy was not encouraging as many did not have positive attitude toward children with epilepsy. The perception of epilepsy amongst the teachers may improve if correct and up-to-date information about the disease is made available to them.Keywords: Attitude, Children, Epilepsy, Knowledge,Teacher