A study of the personality correlates of epileptic and normal adolescents

MENA Dubai 2003 Abstract
Author Nilanjana Sanyal and Priyanka Banerjee
Copy The study was conducted on 40 epileptic adolescents (20 girls and 20 boys) and 40 normal controls matched on sex, age, religion, mother tongue and soico-economic status. The Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and the Bender Gestalt Test were used as screening devices. The Indian adaptation of Bell's Adjustment Inventory and the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Study and also the Beck Depression Inventory and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered to assess and compare the personality correlates of epileptic and normal adolescents. The results revealed that epileptic adolescents were significantly more depressed and anxious as compared to their normal counterparts irrespective of the sex of the individual. Epileptic adolescents were also seen to have more externalized aggression and lower toleration of frustration as compared to their normal counterparts. Family, health, emotional and social adjustment of epileptics is also significantly poorer than that of the normal adolescents. However, an interaction effect was noted with regard to social adjustment: epileptic girls were seen to have poorer social adjustment as compared to the epileptic boys, but normal girls were seen to have better social adjustment than the normal boys. With regard to emotional adjustment, it was noted that girls had significantly poorer emotional adjustment than the boys.