Views of primary and secondary school teachers of childhood epilepsy and asthma (original) (raw)
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Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice, 2013
Background: The attitudes toward people with epilepsy are influenced by the degree of knowledge of the condition. The social problems encountered by school children with epilepsy as a result of negative attitude and beliefs are quite enormous. Objectives The study therefore looked at the knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of teachers, who see a lot of epileptics, relate to them on a daily basis and have influence on them. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey, using a self-administered questionnaire obtained from the author of a similar study in the United States, was carried out among 269 school teachers randomly selected from various secondary schools in Osogbo, the Osun State capital in SouthWest Nigeria. The questionnaire included the scale of attitudes toward persons with epilepsy and knowledge about epilepsy as well as demographic and teaching experience survey among others. Results Despite the high level of education of the teachers ranging from Masters Degree to National Certificate in Education, there were significant deficits in terms of general knowledge about epilepsy (70% of the respondents reported their general knowledge about epilepsy in the lower half of the scale). There was also poor knowledge of the first aids measures in the classrooms. Below one-third (29.2%) felt it was contagious and 40% of respondents reported that sufferers should not be kept in regular classes. However, their attitudes toward epilepsy were generally positive. Conclusions and Recommendations: We concluded that teachers need to have health education courses on common disease conditions such as epilepsy that are prevalent in school age; this might help to reduce the prejudice and increase the acceptance of epileptic individuals in the classrooms. Also, generally public health campaigns should be encouraged in this field.
Tropical Doctor, 2005
Compared with the disability associated with repeated seizures or side-effects of antiepileptic medications, the social stigma associated with epilepsy is often a major handicap to people living with this condition. This study therefore looked at the knowledge, attitude and perception of teachers who see a lot of epileptics, relates on daily bases and have a high influence on students with epilepsy. Self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain information from 460 randomly selected teachers in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in Kwara State-middle belt of Nigeria. The response rate was 75%. Almost all of the teachers had heard about epilepsy, but their awareness does not equate with the acceptance and understanding of epilepsy. About 30.5% believed that it could be contracted through the saliva of an epileptic, 27.7% thought it was synonymous with possession with evil spirit, while 10% misunderstood epilepsy for insanity. Close to one-fifth of the tea...
Journal of Epileptology
Background. Epilepsy is one of the most common pediatric neurological disorders. The knowledge and attitude of teachers toward epileptic students can be crucial. Patients and methods. This cross-sectional study was carried on schoolteachers in the city of Ouagadougou during the period from March 02 to July 20, 2020. The schools were chosen randomly among a list of recognized public or private establishments. Results. Two hundred and twenty teachers were included in the study. Among them, 35.45% were post-primary teachers. Most of them had already heard of epilepsy (98.6%). For the majority of school teachers, epilepsy was not a contagious disease (74%). Regarding the causes of epilepsy, the majority of participants had listed brain disease (65%) and genetic disorders (18.20%). The majority of schoolteachers (70.9%) believed that students with epilepsy usually had associated mental retardation. For the majority of teachers (73.20%), epilepsy was a stigmatizing disease, and students with epilepsy should benefit from personalized supervision (65%). The majority of schoolteachers (75.9%) had a good knowledge of epilepsy, and 43.6% had good attitudes toward epilepsy. The factor associated with teachers' knowledge was having witnessed an epileptic seizure (p < 0.05). The factors related to schoolteacher practice was gender (p < 0.05) and having already witnessed an epileptic seizure (p < 0.05) Conclusion. Our study found that teachers had a good knowledge of epilepsy, but attitudes and practices were inadequate.
Teachers’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Toward Epilepsy in Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality
European Journal of Health Sciences, 2020
Purpose: The objective of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitudes and practices of basic school teachers on epilepsy in Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality.Methodology: The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design. Teachers were sampled from public basic schools in the municipality using the Yamane’s formula for known sampling frame to arrive at 226 participants for the study. The multi-stage and convenience sampling techniques were then used to sample teachers from five of the seven circuits with each circuit being allocated 62 teachers for the study. A semi-structured questionnaire which was used for the data collection was adapted from a study in Namibia. Chi squares and P-values were applied to determine the association between dependent and independent variables as confidence level set at 0.05. Data was analyzed with SPSS version 20.Results: The study found that majority of the teachers, 167 (73.9%) were knowledgeable about epilepsy and 191 (84.5%) had positive atti...
Knowledge and attitudes toward epilepsy among primary, secondary and tertiary level teachers
Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, 2001
The attitudes toward people with epilepsy are influenced by the degree of knowledge of the condition. Teachers usually do not receive any formal instruction on epilepsy during their training. This study was done to access three hundred teachers' knowledge and attitudes toward epilepsy by answering a questionnaire in order to quantify their knowledge, attitude and practice toward epilepsy. Almost all the teachers had heard about epilepsy yet could not demonstrate discrimination among the students. Some teachers still thought that epilepsy was contagious. A few others either objected to having epileptic children in their classes or did not think that an epileptic child could achieve higher studies. The knowledge about the clinical characteristics and initial procedures to attend a person during a seizure was unsatisfactory. We conclude that schools should offer some kind of knowledge or assistance in health services and physicians must ensure that these teachers have sufficient kn...
International Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR), 2019
Background: The knowledge and attitude of school teachers can affect significantly the academic achievement, social development and the quality of life of epileptic students. Objective: To assess the knowledge and attitude of school teachers towards students with epilepsy in Hail, KSA. Methods: This cross-sectional study used a pretested, self-administered, 5-item questionnaire to evaluate the basic knowledge and attitude of Elementary, intermediate, and secondary schools? teachers as regards epilepsy. Schools were chosen at random and included private and public schools for male and female students. Results: The study included 342 teachers. 98.8% of the respondents heard about the disease, with no significant association with age (p = 0.205) or gender (p = 0.593). The common reported causes for epilepsy included mental disease (62.6%), spiritual possession (11.1%), electric charges in the brain (9.9%) and disturbed nerves (5.3%). 71.3% of respondents were willing to provide first aid during fits and objected to prevent epileptic students from studying (97.7%). Age was significantly associated with knowledge about causes of epilepsy (p = 0.008) and readiness to provide first aid (p = 0.012). Gender was not significantly associated with neither knowledge nor attitude of the respondents. Conclusion: Knowledge of teachers about causes of epilepsy was not adequate. Also, most of them would treat epileptic students differently from their peers. Educational programs should be provided to school teachers to correct wrong beliefs about epilepsy and to train them on first aid measures during epileptic fits.
Epilepsy & Behavior, 2020
Background: Epilepsy is the most common noninfectious neurologic disease in Nigeria and other developing African countries. Epilepsy remains a stigmatized disease. The stigma stems from the traditional African belief, which views epilepsy as a spiritual disease. A lack of information and illiteracy has been blamed as the cause of the stigmatization. Aims: The aim of the present study was to assess the awareness, knowledge, and attitude towards epilepsy among secondary school students in Nsukka. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey using a validated, self-administered questionnaire comprising four sections: demographic characteristics, awareness, knowledge, and attitude towards people living with epilepsy (PLWE). Data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 23. Descriptive analysis (frequencies, percentage, mean, and standard deviations) were used to summarize the data. The relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and knowledge score and attitude score was performed using chi-square analysis. Statistical significance was set as a p-value b 0.05. Results: The majority of the students (87.4%) had heard of epilepsy as a disease. The most common source of information was the electronic media (21.5%). More than half (61.6%) had witnessed a convulsion in the past, and 36.9% knew someone with epilepsy. The majority of the students (66.7%) believed that epilepsy is caused by witchcraft. Jerking (77.3%) and loss of consciousness (82.4%) were identified as the commonest manifestation of epilepsy. Regarding treatment management of epilepsy, 81.3% of the students believe the use of orthodox medicine, while 85.4% would insert a spoon in the mouth when a seizure occurs as part of first-aid treatment. Nearly half of the students had good knowledge (48.1%) of epilepsy and a positive attitude (46.5%) towards the disease. The students' knowledge was associated with their school (X 2 = 23.21, p = 0.001). However, students' attitude towards epilepsy was associated with their schools (X 2 = 5.93, p = 0.015) and their guardians' level of education (X 2 = 14.65, p = 0.012). Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest poor knowledge and attitude towards epilepsy among secondary school students in Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria.