Effect of coping-therapy of mothers on severity of generalized epileptic attacks

Background: Epilepsy as the most important chronic neurological disease affects suffering child and his/her family. It causes some stresses in the family, especially in mothers. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the effects of Coping-Therapy (CT) of mothers on severity of generalized epileptic attacks of their children. Methods: This interventional study was conducted in Qom during 2009. Thirty four mothers of children with epilepsy referred to neurology clinics in Qom were selected by convenience sampling method and were divided into intervention and control groups. Coping-Therapy protocol was performed for mothers of intervention group in 8 sessions and a self-made questionnaire was used to measure the severity of the attacks. Data were analyzed by repeated measure analysis of variance. Findings: The group by time interaction which represents the mean differences between the two groups was significant. The mean attack duration was decreased from 30.76 seconds to 12.94 second in intervention group and the difference was statistically significant. Conclusion: With regards to the results, it seems that Coping-Therapy in mothers has considerable effects as a treatment modality in decreasing the severity of epileptic attacks in children.