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Prejudice, and telling others about epilepsy PREJUDICE, AND TELLING OTHERS ABOUT EPILEPSY
It is unfortunately true that those with epilepsy do encounter a fair amount of prejudice against them, especially in the field of employment. This prejudice is perhaps based on dimly held knowledge of those in special care, or institutions, with the very worst epilepsy, often in association with mental retardation due to major neurological disease.
Prejudice against those with other illnesses is rare. No one minds if you have only one kidney or varicose veins. Most people go out of their way to help a blind person, or someone in a wheelchair. However, a blind or physically disabled person is immediately perceived as 'different'. Bystanders can make judgements about his abilities. They may relate to him in a special way—a manner which is instantly perceived and resented by an occupant of the wheelchair! Such a visible handicap is perceived and managed as such by society. Someone with epilepsy, however, is perfectly normal for 99.9 per cent of the time. His 'handicap' is invisible. He then discredits himself, as it were, by having a seizure. His acquaintances feel deceived. The man they thought was a bank manager turns out to be 'really an epileptic', passing himself off as normal. Such an attitude is ridiculous, yet there is persistent evidence for it. Such prejudice will, we hope, gradually fade, as misconceptions about epilepsy are dispelled. However, it would be foolish to deny its existence at the present time.
A major problem that someone with epilepsy has to decide, therefore, is how much to tell, and to whom. For example, no mother wants to tell everyone that her son has epilepsy, but if the boy is staying the night at the house of a friend, it is only sensible to let his friend's parents know that he might have a seizure, and to tell them how to cope. Most parents would agree with this policy if the boy was having seizures every fortnight or so—but what if they occurred only every six months? Parents might feel that they were spoiling the boy's chances of friendship and social development if they sent him off with the label of epilepsy around his neck.
Young people with epilepsy forming friendships with the opposite sex also suffer agonies about these decisions. If the epilepsy is not talked about early in the relationship the subject becomes more and more difficult to bring up. The problem may then be revealed by the occurrence of a seizure without prior explanation. Both parties feel devastated—the one guilty and ashamed at not having had the courage to explain the problem, the other surprised and ashamed of their surprise and inability to cope both with the seizure and their own feelings about it.
On balance, we are sure that it is best for a person with epilepsy to tell those he meets frequently something of the facts, so that they can cope if a seizure occurs. Friends will appreciate the confidence shown in them by the fact of this disclosure.
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