Stress and Seizures - can a brief self-help book help?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Stress and Seizures - can a brief self-help book help?
IRAS ID
117739
Contact name
Markus Reuber
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Research summary
Background: Epilepsy and non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD) are chronic conditions that cause many patients to experience a great degree of stress in their everyday lives. Patients have also reported stress as the commonest trigger of their seizures, and animal studies suggest that stress can make seizures worse. A self-help intervention that would help people manage the stress they experience could therefore improve their quality of life and have positive effects on the frequency of their seizures.
Research Question: Our study will test whether a self-help intervention in the form of a brief booklet can improve the quality of life and reduce the levels of stress of people who experience seizures. In addition, we will explore the associations between seizure severity and frequency, physiological and self-reported stress, and anxiety and depression.
Design: We will recruit patients attending the Outpatient Neurology Clinic at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and measure their quality of life and stress levels before, one month and two months after they have been given the self-help stress reduction booklet. We will measure the changes in quality of life and stress levels using questionnaires and saliva samples.
The study is part of a PhD project at the University of Sheffield and will be carried out between July 2014 and September 2015 in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield.REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Bradford Leeds Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/YH/1119
Date of REC Opinion
29 Sep 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion