psychological distress among iranian patients with epilepsy during covid-19 pandemic

Background: during coronavirus disease-2019 (covid-19) pandemic, patients with epilepsy (pwe) have faced with delayed outpatient visits, cancellation of their para-clinic tests, and problems in accessing to emergencies. regarding to the previous studies, pwe are at increased risk of psychological disorders than healthy persons. objectives: this study aimed to compare psychological distress between pwe and a healthy control group. materials & methods: this study was performed in the sixth wave of covid-19 in mashhad, iran. we evaluated 132 pwe who consecutively referred to the neurology clinics of 22 bahman hospital. also, 132 age and sex matched-healthy persons were included as the control group. demographic and epilepsy related-data were collected through a questionnaire. the 6-item kessler questionnaire was used to assess psychological distress. results: the included pwe and the control groups were similar among all demographic variables, unless monthly income. we found that pwe had significantly higher psychological distress level (p=0.03) and spent significantly more time following the covid-19-related news (p=0.000). by using ancova test we found that pwe have significant higher levels of concerns about covid-19 (p=0.03) and spend more time following covid-19-related news (p=0.04). logistic regression revealed that pwe 1.124 times more concern about covid-19 outbreak and 0.294 time pay less attention to covid-19 related news. conclusion: during public health emergencies, health care professionals should focus not only on seizure control but also on the mental health status of pwe, particularly those with higher number of seizures.