Effectiveness of acceptance and commitment group therapy on improving the quality of life and its components of drug refractory epileptic patients

Abstract

Introduction: Epilepsy is one of the most known and prevalent functional disorders of the nervous system that greatly affects patients;#39 lives. In this account, this experimental research aimed to examine the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on improvement of the quality of life and its components in a group of drug refractory epileptic patients. Materials and Methods: A randomized controlled trial design by pre-test, post-test and 2-month follow-up with control group was applied. Population of the study consisted of all drug-refractory epileptic patients of the Tehran Epilepsy Association. After the clinical interview by a neurologist, 20 patients with drag-refractory diagnosis were selected and randomly divided to two experimental (n=10) and control (n=10) groups and inclusion/exclusion criteria were controlled for. Two groups were matching by age, education and gender. The research informed consent provided from all subjects. Experimental group participated in 8 sessions of 90 minutes of group Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, while the control group had only simple meetings with the therapist. The quality of life in epilepsy questionnaire (QOLIE-31-P) were administered for both groups in 3 stages. Results: Significantly differences were found in the posttest and follow-up stages between the means of two groups for Quality of Life and its components (P