The concept map of felt stigma in patient with epilepsy

Felt stigma is quite common among patients with epilepsy, but can be difficult for patients to express under clinical situations. The objective of this network study is to show that felt stigma can be deconstructed into a network of different concepts and to construct a map of their interconnections.

Two hundred and ten patients with epilepsy were enrolled in our study. Stigma were assessed by Kilifi stigma scale for epilepsy containing 15 items about perceived stigma in patients with epilepsy. Network analysis were used as statistical analysis. We calculated node strength.

Participants' average age was 31.18 years; 46.2 % of these patients were women and 50.5 % of them received education in university. The findings indicated that six edges with strongest regularized partial correlations existed in the network. Two concepts with the highest strength were S10"Inferior" and S14"Discriminate", while the concepts with the lowest strength were S3 "Embarrassed" and S13 "Mistreated".

This network study offers an overview of the richness and complexity of associations involved in the structure of felt stigma in individuals with epilepsy. "Inferior" and "Discriminate" were the most central concepts of felt stigma in patients with epilepsy and the whole system of felt stigma tend to be a self-determined system. This map of concepts and their interrelations revealed in the map may offer some help for the guidance of clinicians and policy makers to reduce felt stigma in patients with epilepsy. However, as this study is based on cross-sectional data and using exploratory statistical tools like network analysis, all the conclusion above needed further confirmatory studies to validate them.