6034 Assessing mental health difficulties in paediatric epilepsy patients with learning disabilities – an overlooked population

Objectives Approximately 10% of children and adolescents suffer from mental health difficulties in Britain. A disproportionate percentage of these children is made up by children diagnosed with epilepsy and those diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD). We assessed mental health in children with concurrent epilepsy and LD using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) within our standard offer of care. The PAVES project demonstrated that the SDQ was an efficient and effective screening tool to direct CwE on a pathway for early intervention for mental health difficulties (George et al., 2021). We aimed to describe scores across patients to indicate the level of mental health difficulties reported as compared to the general population and to those with additional epilepsy only. Methods Children were identified through standard clinical records and were included if they were attending special school and had identified epilepsy and/or learning disability and were receiving ongoing clinical review. Parent/carer were offered to complete the SDQ as part of ongoing care and advice was given about behavioural/psychological support. Scores were collated and compared to previously reported scores for those with epilepsy from the PAVES project. Results SDQ scores were collated on 15 children with 10 children with epilepsy (CwE) and learning disability and 5 with LD only. Traffic-light ranking from the PAVES study was used to describe these children. Our results (figure 1) showed that all participants in the LD + Epilepsy group ranked either amber or RED, and no participants were ranked GREEN suggesting that children with concurrent epilepsy and LD are of greater mental health need that those with epilepsy alone. Conclusion As expected, we found that children with concurrent epilepsy and LD scored higher on the SDQ than the general population confirming that there is a greater need for mental health assessment and intervention in this group. In comparison to the PAVES project in which CwE in specialist setting with LD were excluded, these children with LD and epilepsy had a much higher prevalence of mental health difficulties, which was higher again than those with LD only. The numbers included was small but this evaluation shows the need for further consideration in relation to effective resource provision and intervention for this overlooked group. References Davies S, Heyman I, Goodman R. A population survey of mental health problems in children with epilepsy. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 2007;45(5):292–295. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8749.2003.tb00398.x. George C, Felix SA, McLellan A, Shetty J, Middleton J, Chin RF, Poveda B, Brand C, Small M, Verity K. Pilot project of psychological services integrated into a pediatric epilepsy clinic: Psychology Adding Value – Epilepsy Screening (PAVES). Epilepsy & Behavior 2021;120:107968. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2021.107968.