Comparing Executive Functions and Psychological Confusion in the Mothers of Children with and without Epilepsy

The birth of a child with a specific disease disrupts the normal life of parents, especially mothers. It reduces the mental health and quality of life of parents. Moreover, executive functions include organizing, willing, active mind, protection, planning and motor control, time perception, future thinking, esoteric language modernization, and problem–solving. These functions help individuals with living and performing learning and mental processes. Previous studies suggested that mothers with sick children encounter further stress and anxiety than other mothers and experience poor executive functions and ongoing psychological confusion. It is essential to examine what cognitive and emotional abilities the mothers of children with epilepsy have and their inequalities with other mothers; through this, more detailed information is provided for use in counseling, rehabilitation, and treatment. The present study aimed to compare executive functions and psychological confusion in the mothers of children with and without epilepsy.

The statistical population of this causal–comparative study included all the mothers of children with epilepsy and all mothers with healthy children in Tabriz City, Iran, in 2020. In total, 50 mothers of children with epilepsy were selected by the convenience sampling method. Next, 50 test–matched mothers with healthy children were selected. Both groups completed Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (Grant & Berg, 1948) and the Anxiety, Depression, Stress Scale (DASS–21) (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). The inclusion criteria for the mothers of children with epilepsy included having a child with epilepsy and being literate. The exclusion criteria for both groups were illiteracy and the lack of consent to participate in the study. In this study, descriptive statistics (mean & standard deviation), as well as inferential statistics, including Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), Independent Samples t–test(to compare the mean age of the study participants), and Chi–squared test (to compare the mean educational level of the study participants), were used to analyze the obtained data in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The present study findings indicated that the difference between the mean score of the study groups was significant in the dimensions of termination error (p</em><0.001) and the total error of executive functions (p</em>=0.005). Additionally, the mothers of children with epilepsy presented higher mean scores concerning total executive function error than their counterparts with healthy children. Furthermore, respecting depression (p</em><0.001), anxiety (p</em><0.001), stress (p<0.001), and total psychological turmoil (p</em><0.001), the difference between the mean scores of the two groups was significant. 

According to the research results, the mothers of children with epilepsy reported more depression, anxiety, stress, and errors in executive functions. These findings indicate that these mothers can not properly use their mental capacity.