Population and Health Students Knowledge, Attitude and Perception towards Epilepsy Patients

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This study was carried out to determine knowledge and attitude towards epilepsy among University of Cape Coast Population and Health students, Ghana. This is study was conducted among Population and Health students in the University of Cape Coast by distributing questionnaires constructed in English language. Questionnaires were administered to 200 randomly selected students. Out of the 200 questionnaires collected and analyzed, majority of the students (97.5%) have heard of epilepsy as a disease with the common source of information coming from the University teaching (66.0%). Most of the students (78.0%) reported that epilepsy is a psychiatric disease and about 69% believe that the disease is not treatable and a significant number of the respondents (79.5%) indicated that it is a hereditary disease. The negative attitudes reported by the students include people with epilepsy should not marry close relatives of theirs (53.5%) or shake hands with epileptic patients (54%) while 83% reported that epileptics should not have children and 80.5% indicated not to study or work with epileptics. Students have knowledge about the disease but they have bad or negative attitudes towards epilepsy which need to be improved by enhancing more information through education to improve their knowledge. Several studies have reported that educated individuals have better knowledge and less negative attitude towards epilepsy [28-31]. University students’ especially health care students are considered as educated people and it is essential to have enough knowledge for the future health care about epilepsy and to improve their attitude towards people with the disease. A lot of studies have been conducted on the knowledge and attitude towards epilepsy among diوٴerent groups of the society but there are no published studies among the University of Cape Coast Population and Health students on epilepsy. Нe aim of this study is to investigate the knowledge and attitudes towards epilepsy among UCC Population and Health students. Нis was a cross-sectional study conducted in the University of Cape Coast among Population and Health students (PoH). Нe University, which is 5 km west of Cape Coast, is on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It operates on two campuses: Нe Southern Campus (Old Site) and the Northern Campus (New Site/Science). Нe findings of this study indicate a favourable knowledge about epilepsy among population and health students. However, they have some negative attitude towards epilepsy patient. Based on that, education about the disease needs to improve since majority of the respondents revealed that they do not have enough knowledge on epilepsy. Нis can be enhanced through the provision of information about the disease in school which will enable them to understand more about the disease and have better attitude towards people with epilepsy.