Educating People with Epilepsy and Their Families

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Introduction
With 65 million people worldwide suffering from it, epilepsy is a growing health concern. One in twenty-six people will be diagnosed with epilepsy in the United States at some point in their lives. Epilepsy affects people of any age and any background (TEF, 2013). Sixty percent of cases are of unknown cause. Seizures affect different parts of the brain and result from different factors such as genetic, symptomatic, or idiopathic. Seizures can express themselves as partial (involved in one side of the brain) or generalized (involved in both sides of the brain), and as absent (the person stares blankly for a few seconds), atonic (person falls to the ground with loss of consciousness), tonic (the patient becomes very rigid and may or may not lose consciousness and falls to the ground), myoclonic (repetitive jerky motion) and tonic-clonic (a series of muscle stiffening and loosening and the patient loses consciousness and the patient falls to the ground). Patients can display signs of more than one type of seizure occurring in different parts of the brain (Solomon et. al., 2012). The condition is named epilepsy when the seizures are recurrent without any definitive trigger such as fever (Burns et. al., 2009).
Disease Process
Seizures are a result of misfiring of the cortical neurons of the brain which can cause episodes of involuntary contraction of voluntary muscles (Burns et. al., 2009). This sudden, transient disturbance of brain function can also influence involuntary motor, sensory, autonomic, or psychic events in any combination with or without the loss of consciousness (Hay et. al., 2011).
Diagnosis is based on a good history. The patient may or may not remember the incident and bystanders may only rec...

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...e, R. R. (2009). The humanbecoming family model. Nursing Science Quarterly. 22 (4). 305-309.
Seaburn, D., & Erba, G. (2003). The family experience of "sudden health": the case of intractable epilepsy. Family Process, 42(4), 453-467.
Solomon, N., & McHale, K. (2012). An overview of epilepsy in children and young people. Nursing Children & Young People, 24(6), 28-35.
Soria, C., Callu, D., Viguier, D., El Sabbagh, S., Bulteau, C., Laroussinie, F., & Dellatolas, G. (2008). Parental report of cognitive difficulties, quality of life and rehabilitation in children with epilepsy or treated for brain tumour. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 11(4), 268-275.
The Epilepsy Foundation. (2013). Epilepsy. Retrieved from http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/index.cfm.
Zamani, G., Mehdizadeh, M., & Sadeghi, P. (2012). Attempt to Suicide in Young Ages with Epilepsy. Iran

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