Legal aspects of epilepsy

The legal aspects of epilepsy encompass all the issues that are encountered in the legal considerations that affect any person’s everyday life. These areas include all those experiences that involve the home, work, driving, inter-personal relationships and virtually every aspect of daily living. There is no reason to suspect that these legal issues should be any different to those facing people who do not have epilepsy. The real difference is that the person with epilepsy has a stigmatizing condition which further impacts upon these experiences which are magnified when encountering people who are ignorant of what it means to have epilepsy or for that matter any other similar chronic medical illness. Unlike many chronic illnesses, epilepsy is an unpredictable condition in which there are a variety of different seizure types and syndromes1, 2. This means that each person who has epilepsy is a unique individual, as determined both by their personal makeup and by the influence that their epilepsy may exert upon who and what they are. What follows is a brief overview of the legal aspects of epilepsy with special reference to medical issues that might emerge within the context of the Common Law environment as exists in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, South Africa or Australia. This is not intended to deny the presence of other legal systems, such as Civil Law jurisdictions as exist in Europe, but rather it acknowledges the constraints that are imposed upon the preparation of this type of limited treatise.