Children with epilepsy: assessing state anxiety through drawings and a self-report questionnaire

ABSTRACT

Background

Children and adolescents with epilepsy are at increased risk for anxiety disorder. The aim of this preliminary study was to examine children and adolescents’ self-report on state anxiety by utilizing drawings and a structured questionnaire.

Method

The sample consisted of 30 patients (7 - 13 years) diagnosed with epilepsy. Each participant was asked to complete self-report questionnaire and to draw two drawings: one depicting himself/herself today and one depicting himself/herself before the illness.

Results

The mean score of children and adolescents’ state anxiety on the structured questionnaire was moderate, and the administration of the projective Draw-A-Person method added nonverbal approval to this result.

Conclusions

The findings indicate that despite potential critiques and limitations of the use of figure drawings as a research tool, future studies can incorporate both art therapy assessments and psychometric measures to address psychosocial aspects of epilepsy in children and adolescent.

KEYWORDS:

• Epilepsy
• state anxiety
• self-report
• children

Compliance with ethical standards

Research involving Human Participants: All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration.

Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Lahat, Dr. Hayman and the Center’s social workers for their research collaboration. We express our gratitude to all of the children who willingly participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.