Winsor, Alice A., Richards, Caroline, Seri, Stefano, Liew, Ashley and Bagshaw, Andrew P. (2024). Quality of life in children with epilepsy: The role of parental mental health and sleep disruption. Epilepsy and Behavior, 158 ,
Abstract
Background: Parents of children with epilepsy (CWE) are at increased risk of mental health difficulties including anxiety and depression, as well as sleep difficulties. From both the child's and parent's perspectives, health-related quality of life has been shown to be strongly related to parental mental health. However, there is no literature on parental sleep as a predictor of child health-related quality of life. The role of parental variables has been assessed in relation to epilepsy-specific variables (e.g., seizure severity, anti-seizure medications) and how these relate to health-related quality of life, but prior studies have failed to consider the role of co-occurring conditions which are prevalent in CWE. The current study aims to assess how common anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms and sleep problems are in parents of CWE; and to determine the impact these parental variables as well as child co-occurring conditions have on health-related quality of life in CWE. Methods: 33 CWE aged 4–14 years old were recruited from two hospitals and parents were asked to complete a series of questionnaires assessing both child and parental variables. Results: It was found that 33.3 % and 12.0 % of parents of CWE experienced clinically significant anxiety and depression symptoms respectively. In addition 67.9 % of parents presented with significant sleep problems. In initial analysis, parental anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms and sleep problems were all significantly predictive of child health-related quality of life. However when co-occurring child sleep problems and neurodevelopmental characteristics were included, parental variables were no longer significantly predictive of child health-related quality of life. Conclusion: These results suggest that child co-occurrences mediate the relationship between parental variables and child health-related quality of life. The current data highlight the need for a systemic approach to epilepsy management and suggest that support for co-occurrences could benefit health-related quality of life for children and their parents.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2024.109941 |
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Divisions: | College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology College of Health & Life Sciences > Aston Institute of Health & Neurodevelopment (AIHN) |
Funding Information: | This work was supported by the Waterloo Foundation. Grant code: 1970/3346. CR’s time was supported by funding from Cerebra. |
Additional Information: | Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Quality of life,Co-occurrences,Parental mental health,Paediatric Epilepsy |
Publication ISSN: | 1525-5069 |
Data Access Statement: | Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2024.109941. |
Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2024 12:15 |
Date Deposited: | 01 Aug 2024 14:38 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://www.epi ... 0322-6/fulltext
(Publisher URL) http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2024-09 |
Published Online Date: | 2024-07-17 |
Accepted Date: | 2024-07-04 |
Submitted Date: | 2024-03-09 |
Authors: |
Winsor, Alice A.
Richards, Caroline Seri, Stefano ( ![]() Liew, Ashley Bagshaw, Andrew P. |