Personality Functioning in Current Epilepsy Patients and People Recovered from Epilepsy

Abstract

The aim of the current study is to examine the effect of epilepsy recovery on personality traits by analyzing data from a large representative cohort from the United Kingdom. This study used data from Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). A predictive normative modelling approach along with one-sample t-tests were used to analyze the personality trait differences between 190 current epilepsy patients (40% male) with a mean age of 43.95 ± 15.68 years and 102 previous epilepsy patients (45.1% male) with a mean age of 47.50 ± 15.27 years. People who recovered from epilepsy had lower Neuroticism but higher Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion scores than people who did not recover from epilepsy after controlling for demographic covariates, which can be potentially explained by the psychophysiological pathways. Health professionals can make better post-discharge plans based on personality traits as a result of epilepsy recovery.