Meditation May Improve Quality of Life in Epilepsy Patients

A study published in the medical journal Neurology has uncovered new evidence to suggest that mindfulness training—a type of meditation practice that is growing in popularity—may help to improve the mental health and wellbeing of patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong and the University of Melbourne conducted the study in an effort to investigate the potential benefits that might be associated with mindfulness-based therapy and social support in patients with hard-to-treat epilepsy.

The theory of mindfulness therapy is that it teaches an individual to become more aware of what is happening inside and outside of his or her own mind, with an emphasis on the present moment. Doing so is meant to help ease anxiety and challenge traditional ways of perceiving one’s own thoughts.

The study included a group of 60 participants with drug resistant epilepsy. Each of the 60 participants was randomly assigned to either mindfulness-based therapy or a social support intervention. Each group participated in four biweekly intervention sessions. To measure the effectiveness of each intervention, the researchers analyzed the change in the total score of the Patient-Weighted Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31-P). Secondary considerations were given to seizure frequency, mood, and measures of neurocognitive functions. In order to ensure the integrity of the results, assessors of these measures were blind to the intervention group of each participant.

Following both interventions, QOLIE-31-P scores improved for both groups; however, the improvement for the mindfulness-based therapy group was substantially higher, with a positive change almost twice that seen in the social support group. Moreover, significantly more patients in the mindfulness-based therapy group had clinically meaningful improvements in QOLIE-31-P as well reductions in depressive and anxiety symptoms, reductions in seizure frequency, and improvements in delayed memory.

From these results, the researchers concluded that psychotherapy for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy could be a beneficial therapeutic option, more so than enhanced social support. More on the study can be found at Neurology.

Tang V, Poon WS, Kwan P. Mindfulness-based therapy for drug-resistant epilepsy: an assessor-blinded randomized trial. Neurology. Published September 2, 2015. [Epub ahead of print].