Correlates of wellbeing in a New Zealand epilepsy sample

This study examined the association between social, psychological, and physical wellbeing and a range of epilepsy related and sociodemographic variables in a sample of 138 people with epilepsy. A survey questionnaire method was used, and 90% of the sample was drawn from a New Zealand Epilepsy Association support group sampling frame and 10% from a hospital clinic. The mean age of respondents was 38.4 years (SD 14.9), the sample was very broadly based. Individuals were assigned to high, medium, or low, wellbeing groups, depending on their scores on an overall wellbeing scale. The technique of multiple discriminant analysis was used to identify significant correlates of wellbeing, and a function emerged which separated the wellbeing groups clearly. The function accounted for almost 95% of the variance. A variable which measured the degree of correspondence between current self perceptions and anticipated self without epilepsy correlated--0.62 with the function, and this was by far the most important discriminator. Other significant correlates of wellbeing identified were--employment status (+0.37), seizure control (-0.30), certainty over diagnosis (-0.25), and age (+0.19). In clinical practice it would be profitable to examine people's perceptions of themselves and of their circumstances alongside measures of epilepsy.