THERAPUTIC YOGAMEDITATION AND GROUP COUNSELLING – A COMPARATIVE STUDY

ABSTRACT of paper presented at the Indian Epilepsy Conference - Bangalore-5- 6- October 2006

REDUCTION IN ANXIETY FOLLOWING GROUP INTERVENTION AND YOGA-MEDITATION FOR PATIENTS WITH EPILEPSY -A RANDOMIZED EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Authors : Jayachandran. D, Kurnar.K.A, Radhakrishnan.K, Sudev P.B and  Mohandas.G

R. Madhavan Nayar Centre for Comprehensive Epilepsy Care , Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Science and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala,

Background : Anxiety and depression are more prevalent among people with epilepsy. Some patients may have seizures that are associated with, or precipitated by anxiety. Many studies, fail to distinguish between 'state' anxiety and 'trait' anxiety. Psycho educational group intervention for patients with epilepsy and their family members and yoga-meditation ('Pranayama 'for 20 minutes twice daily ) have been practiced in this center for the past many years. The present attempt is to evaluate the efficacy of these two programs in reducing state and trait anxiety following an experimental research design.

Objective: To find out the impact of psycho educational group intervention and Yoga meditation in reducing state and trait anxiety among patients with epilepsy attending these programs.

Method: 36 patients with epilepsy were randomized into three groups (12 each) for group intervention, meditation and control group. The state-trait anxiety scale developed by Spiel Berger, which was translated and standardized into Malayalam language, was administered to patients attending psycho educational group sessions, yoga meditation and a control group prior to intervention and after 3 months and six months after intervention.

Results : The actual changes after controlling the initial difference among experimental and control groups (ANCOVA) at six months showed significant reduction in scores (P=<0.G5) for trait anxiety and total anxiety for psycho education and meditation groups. The analysis with ANOVA also showed significant reduction (P=<0.05) in state anxiety score for psycho education group.

Conclusions: The psycho education and Yoga meditation methods are effective in reducing anxiety for patients with epilepsy attending these programms.