Indagine epidemiologica sulla sessualità in donne con epilessia

Quality of sexual life in women with epilepsy, aged 20-40, was studied through detailed questionnaires, that were submitted to out-patients while attending the San Paolo Hospital in Milan for routine controls. The answers were retrospectively referred to the last year. The control group, matched for the main sociocultural variables, consists of healthy women, attending an outpatient clinic for routine gynecologic controls. The items concern sociocultural variables, gynecologic and obstetric anamnesis, contraceptive choices, psychosexual level, sexual anamnesis and epileptic profile. Preliminary data suggest that: women with epilepsy have a delay in the evolution of primary psychosexual needs, with persistent and dominant dependence from affective bonds and difficulty in entering thoroughly into active and independent life, in spite of fairly good school results; - single patients are significantly higher in the epileptic group (48.3% vs 30%); - the prevalent behaviour is toward stable relationships, that begin later and tend to last longer than controls; - 30% have never experienced orgasms with masturbation and reveal difficulty in autoerotic practices; - 58% experience clitoral orgasm during intercourse (vs. 90%) while 78% experience vaginal orgasm (vs. 50%); - 46.46% has intercourses without reliable contraception; -19.19% of the epileptic women had voluntary abortion (vs. 1.3%). Further details and discussion are given in the text. If Further confirmed, these data suggest that women with epilepsy, besides the psychosexual delay, are persistently investing on the more archaic dimensions of sexual identity, are an high-risk reproductive group, and need further support to reach a more satisfying quality of life.