A Survey on the Impact of Metacognitive Beliefs, Anxiety, and Depression on the Stigma of Epilepsy in Khoram-Abad, Iran

Metacognitive beliefs and processes contribute to anxiety and depression are often associated with Emotional and behavioral disorders in patients with epilepsy. Despite extensive studies revealed that anxiety and depression contribute to the stigma of patients with epilepsy, little is known on the relationship between metacognition and stigma in epileptic patients. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between metacognition beliefs, anxiety, and depression with the stigma of epilepsy.

In this intermittent-descriptive study, 100 patients, both male and female, with epilepsy treated in different health care centers in khoram-Abad city in 2018 were selected. A short survey on meta-cognition beliefs, a questionnaire of anxiety and depression, analogy of stigma epilepsy, and a questionnaire of comprehension diseases were used.

The results showed that anxiety and cognitive confidence predicted the stigma in epileptic patients. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between anxiety and stigma and a negative correlation between cognitive confidence and stigma were observed in these patients. The regression analysis revealed that in the first step 44% of stigma variance was predicted by anxiety, and in the second step 52% of stigma variance was predicted by anxiety and cognitive predictor variables.

Our data indicate that a high-level of anxiety and a low-level of cognitive confidence could predict the stigma of patients with epilepsy.