Attitudes toward epilepsy in Indonesia
Introduction
Epilepsy was known to cause significant psychosocial consequences in most aspects of life including employment, social interactions, family relationships, and experiential activities, leading to poor quality of life [1]. These consequences might be due to impaired social cognitive skills or social stigma [1], [2]. Seizures and epilepsy were often associated with sins, demonic possession, insanity, and considered contagious, especially in Asian countries [3]. Many Indonesian people consider epilepsy not as a disease but connected with mystic such as possessed by evil, and some of them still believed that it is contagious [4].
The prevalence of epilepsy in developing countries is usually higher than in developed countries. Over half of the 50 million people with epilepsy worldwide are estimated to live in Asia [3]. In Indonesia, new epilepsy cases were estimated to be 250,000/year [5]. Indonesia is the largest island country in the world with a population of 264 million, with diverse ethnicity and cultural backgrounds, which make it important to understand the variability and degree of the attitudes toward epilepsy in this country. Javanese (40%) is the largest ethnic group in Indonesia, followed by Sundanese (15%), Malays (3%), Sulawesians (3%), and others. However, they are distributed in different geographical locations, e.g., Javanese and Sundanese in Java island and Minahasan in North Sulawesi [6].
The Public Attitudes Toward Epilepsy (PATE) scale was first designed and applied in Malaysia, to measure the public attitudes toward employment, education, social and marital relationship among people with epilepsy (PWE). The PATE scale divided attitudes toward epilepsy into general and personal dichotomy based on the requirement of long-term personal commitments [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. The PATE scale was translated to Indonesian language and shown to be a validated and reliable translation for measuring PATE. Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) has been adopted as the national language to facilitate communication and national unity, though there are many spoken languages in Indonesia [12].
This study aimed to determine the attitude toward epilepsy among the Javanese from Jakarta, Sundanese from Tasikmalaya, and Minahasan from Manado using the Indonesian PATE scale.
Section snippets
Sample recruitment
This was a cross-sectional study. Data were collected in 2 cities in Indonesia: Tasikmalaya represents the Sundanese and Manado represents the Minahasan. Adults, 18 years old or more, from diverse socioeconomic background, were recruited via convenience sampling. Questionnaires were distributed anonymously and were self-reported. Basic demographic characteristics were attained, including gender, age, marital status, education level, employment status, and monthly income. For comparison, data
Demographic characteristics of the sample
Two hundred participants were recruited, consisting of 100 Sundanese (in Tasikmalaya, Java) and Minahasan (Manado, North Sulawesi) each, and compared to 100 Javanese (Jakarta, Java) from previous study [12]. The participants had a mean age of 38.5 years, majority were female (54.0%), married (67.3%), and had secondary education level or lower (56.7%). Most participants (25.33%) were employed full time, and 51.3% had monthly income of 1.5–10 million Indonesian Rupiah (USD 106-714). The Sundanese
Discussion
This study showed that the Javanese participants had poorer attitudes toward epilepsy than the Minahasan and Sundanese, as well as Malaysian populations.
Conclusion
The attitudes toward epilepsy were similar between the Indonesian (Sundanese and the Minahasan) and Malaysian, except the Javanese with poorer attitude. These differences could be socioeconomically or culturally related.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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