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

Epilepsy is one of the most known and prevalent functional disorders of the nervous system that greatly affects patients' 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.

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.

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<0.001).

It could be concluded that, the acceptance and commitment therapy was an effective intervention on improving the quality of life and its components in drug refractory epileptic patients could be recommended as adjunct therapy along with their medication.