The Psychosocial Adjustment of Adolescents With Chronic Health Condition (A Study of Epileptic and Diabetic Adolescents)
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Date
2009-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The study was primarily aimed at examining the psychological and social adjustment
of epileptic and diabetic adolescents as compared with 'healthy ' group of
adolescents. Moreover, the study also aimed at further investigating into the role of
some demographic variables (age, gender), clinical variables (illness duration, health
attack frequency) as well as attitude towards illness for the psychological and social
adjustment of the epileptic, diabetic and 'healthy' group of adolescents who took parI
in the study. Data were collected by way of questionnaires from a total of J 56
conveniently selected adolescents (52 epileptic, 52 diabetic, and 52 'healthy' .
adolescents that were matched for age and sex) from two local hospitals and three
government schools in Addis Ababa. The data were analyzed by making use of an
independent I-test, one way ANOTfA, Scheffe 's procedure, and mean comparisons.
The findings of the study revealed that adolescents with epilepsy had more
psychological and social adjustment problems compared with 'healthy' as well as
diabetic adolescents. Diabetic adolescents, on other hand, exhibited relatively similar
psychological and social adjustment outcomes as the 'healthy' adolescents. Among
epileptic adolescents, a relatively higher seizure frequency and unfavorable altitude
towards illness were found to be significantly associated with psychological and
social adjustment problems. However in diabetic adolescents, except the female
gender that was significantly associated with psychological adjustment problems,
none of the studied demographic variables, clinical variables as well as attitude
towards illness demonstrated association with the adolescents' psychological and
social adjustment
Epileptic adolescents seemed to endure more compromised psychological and ocial
adjustment problems. To this end the study primarily recommended the integration of
psychosocial support services with medical services. Moreover, making accessible
appropriate epilepsy related information to the adolescents was sugge 'ted along
many other recommendations
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Education