Depression among epileptic patients has multiple effects: poor quality of life, increased seizure frequency, risk of suicide, increased health care cost and worsened side effects of anti-epileptic medications. It is often under recognized and untreated among these patients. To assess the prevalence of depression and associated factors among epileptic patient on treatment follow up at selected public health facilities of Bench Maji zone, south west Ethiopia, 2017. Cross-sectional study was conducted in selected public health facilities of Bench Maji zone from March 3- April 3/2017. Simple random sampling was used. Data was collected through face to face interview and analyzed using frequency, percentage and binary logistic. In this study a total of 244 participants were involved, and the response rate was 98.8%. The overall prevalence of depression was 51.2%. Of these, 60%, 36%, and 4% of the patients were found to have mild, moderate and severe depression respectively. Low educational status (AOR=2.5, CI (1.32, 4.78)), Seizure frequencies ≥ 3 per month (AOR=3.06, CI (1.412, 6.65)), Age onset of epilepsy ≤ 11 years (AOR=4.58, CI (1.94, 10.82)), low anti-epileptic drug adherence (AOR=4.81, CI (2.32, 9.97)) and poor knowledge about epilepsy (AOR=2.77, CI (1.5,5.12)) were found to be independent predictors of depression among epileptic patients. Considerable amount of epileptic patients had depression that may predispose them to different health related problems. Low educational status, seizure frequencies, age at onset of the epilepsy, low antiepileptic drug adherence and poor knowledge about epilepsy were found to be contributing factor to the depression.

A facility based cross-sectional study design was conducted in selected public health facilities of Bench maji zone from March 3- April 3 /2017. Bench maji zone is located in southern nation nationalities of regional state of Ethiopia. It is situated at about 561 km away from Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, in the Southwest direction. Нere are a total of 219 health facilities in the zone consisting of one Teaching hospital, one district hospital, 35 Health Centers and 182 Health posts, all of these serving around 760313 peoples. Нere are 541 adult epileptic patients attending at selected public health facilities of Bench Maji zone and they are attending at health facilities of Mizan Tepi university teaching hospital (200); Bachuma hospital (110); Shewa Bench health center (89); Sheko health center (72) and Mizan health center (70). Нe study was conducted from March 3-April/2017.

In this study depression among epileptic patients were found to be high. Low educational status, early age onset of epilepsy, low antiepileptic drug adherence, poor seizure controllability and poor knowledge about epilepsy were independent predictors of depression in epileptic patients. Based on the findings the following recommendations were drawn. • Hospitals and health center managers should design appropriate screening programs for depression among epileptics in their facilities for early recognition and treatments. • Health care providers at both hospitals and health centers should routinely screen epileptics for depression. • Health care providers should provide information regarding the fact about their illness and should strength care receivers’ drug adherence for better out come and prevention of depression.