Effectiveness of cognitive - behavioral group therapy with focusing on dysfunctional attitudes in epilepsy on quality of life in intractable epileptic patients

Epilepsy has a lot of physical and psychosocial consequences for patients. The propose of this research was to determine the efficacy of cognitive behavioral group therapy (CBT) with focus on dysfunctional attitudes related to epilepsy on quality of life in patients with intractable epilepsy. Twenty patients with chronic and poorly controlled seizures were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. CBT during 8 weekly sessions was applied for the experimental group with a focus on cognitive restructuring, modification cognitive distortions and training of behavioral techniques. Quality of life in epilepsy scale (QOLIE-89) was applied as the pre-test, post-test and in the follow- up for both groups. Analysis of covariance was applied to analyze the data. The data analysis showed that the mean scores of QOLIE-89 in experimental group significantly increased in post-test and follow-up as compared with those of the control group. Cognitive-behavioral group therapy with focus on dysfunctional attitudes, as a complementary therapy, has a remarkable efficacy on improvement of quality of life in epileptic patients.