Improve Epilepsy with Mindfulness

 

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

 

“We found benefits of short-term psychotherapy on patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Mindfulness therapy was associated with greater benefits than social support alone in quality of life, mood, seizure frequency, and verbal memory.” – Venus Tang

 

Epilepsy, also known as seizure disorder, is a chronic disorder that includes a wide variety of neurological dysfunctions with the common property of unpredictable seizures of the brain. The seizures can vary widely from individual to individual in intensity, duration, frequency and parts of the brain affected. Epilepsy occurs to about 4% of the population sometime during their lifetime with about 150,000 new cases each year in the U.S. The first order treatment for Epilepsy is anti-seizure drugs which are effective for about 70% of the cases. These drugs can produce mild side effects of feeling tired, stomach upset or discomfort, dizziness, or blurred vision. In some cases, surgery is called for, removing the portion of the brain where the seizures originate.

 

The 30% of epilepsy sufferers who do not respond to drugs are not only afflicted with uncontrollable seizures but also have high rates of anxiety and depression, poor quality of life, and cognitive problems. These secondary symptoms may actually worsen the epilepsy. Hence, there is a need to find safe and effective treatments for drug resistant epilepsy. Mindfulness training has been shown to produces changes in the brain and has been shown to be effective in treating anxiety, depression, and cognitive problems. So, it is possible that mindfulness training may help with drug resistant epilepsy.

 

In today’s Research News article “Pay Attention: Mindfulness in Epilepsy.” See:

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1455665217790733/?type=3&theater

or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988075/

Koubeissi provides a commentary on a study by Tang et. al “Mindfulness-Based Therapy for Drug-Resistant Epilepsy: An Assessor-Blinded Randomized Trial.” In this study, they recruited patients with drug resistant epilepsy and randomly assigned them to receive either social support or mindfulness-based therapy. Treatment occurred every other week for a total of four sessions. They found that the patients treated with mindfulness-based therapy had significantly greater reductions in depression, anxiety, and seizure frequency, and improvements in delayed memory. Importantly, these patients also reported a clinically significant increase in quality of life. Hence, they found that only four sessions of mindfulness-based therapy were very effective in improving the symptoms of drug resistant epilepsy.

 

Koubeissi commented on the importance of the finding of improved quality of life, with the mindfulness-based therapy group showing significant clinical improvement. He claims that this is what is most important to the patients. He attributes the improvements to the ability of mindfulness to improve anxiety, depression, and cognitive problems. By focusing attention on the present moment, mindfulness interrupts the past and future based thinking that results in fear, anxiety, worry, and catastrophizing. He concludes that these reductions relax the patient, allowing them to simply focus on the present symptoms and thereby prevent the exacerbation of the epilepsy. In other words, he concludes that mindfulness doesn’t directly improve epilepsy. Rather, it does so indirectly by preventing the amplification of the symptoms by anxiety and depression.

 

So, improve epilepsy with mindfulness.

 

“One of the scariest things about being epileptic is that you develop this fear of having a seizure in public. I started practicing mindful breathing in order to cope with this anxiety, and it’s especially helpful if I’m somewhere crowded or loud.” – Mango Helath

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts

 

Study Summary

Koubeissi, M. (2016). Pay Attention: Mindfulness in Epilepsy. Epilepsy Currents, 16(4), 245–246. http://doi.org/10.5698/1535-7511-16.4.245

 

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based therapy (MT) and social support (SS) in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. METHODS: We performed an assessor-blinded randomized control trial. Sixty patients with drug-resistant epilepsy were randomly allocated to MT or SS (30 per group). Each group received 4 biweekly intervention sessions. The primary outcome was the change in the total score of the Patient-Weighted Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31-P). Secondary outcomes included seizure frequency, mood symptoms, and neurocognitive functions. The assessors were blinded to the patient’s intervention grouping. Results were analyzed using general linear model with repeated measure. RESULTS: Following intervention, both the MT (n=30) and SS (n=30) groups had an improved total QOLIE-31-P, with an improvement of +6.23 for MT (95% confidence interval [CI] +4.22 to +10.40) and +3.30 for SS (95% CI +1.03 to +5.58). Significantly more patients in the MT group had a clinically important improvement in QOLIE-31-P (+11.8 or above) compared to those who received SS (11 patients vs. 4 patients). Significantly greater reduction in depressive and anxiety symptoms, seizure frequency, and improvement in delayed memory was observed in the MT group compared with the SS group. CONCLUSIONS: We found benefits of short-term psychotherapy on patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Mindfulness therapy was associated with greater benefits than SS alone in quality of life, mood, seizure frequency, and verbal memory. CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: This study provides Class II evidence that mindfulness-based therapy significantly improves quality of life in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988075/