Abstracts

A large proportion of epilepsy patients suffer from mood disorders. However, there is little research on whether traditional retrospective reporting of mood/affect accurately reflects how epilepsy patients feel at specific times. The goals of this study were to: 1) examine the relationship between and assessment of affect (Rate how you feel ) and 2) examine the temporal relationship between momentary affect and seizures. Participants were 24 epilepsy patients (10 males; ages 20-62) undergoing inpatient video-EEG monitoring. While hospitalized, each patient was loaned a watch that beeped at random intervals several times daily, signaling him/her to complete a 44-item affect questionnaire (e.g., enthusiastic, miserable, tired). Items yielded 6 scales: activated positive, positive, unactivated positive, activated negative, negative, and unactivated negative. Prior to discharge, patients rated their affect with these items (Rate how you felt during your hospital stay). Correlations between average momentary ratings and retrospective ratings were strong for all scales, [italic]r[/italic]s = .57 to .79, [italic]p[/italic]s [lt] .01. Thus, patients who, on average, reported negative (or positive) affect on their momentary ratings also gave negative (or positive) retrospective ratings. Despite strong correlations, t-tests comparing the [italic]means[/italic] for retrospective and momentary ratings showed significantly more positive retrospective ratings for all 3 positive scales, [italic]p[/italic]s [lt] .05. Thus, patients recalled feeling during their stay than they reported feeling at the time.
[underline]Temporal relationship between affect and seizures[/underline]: Twelve patients had EEG-verified seizures during their stay. Their [italic]momentary[/italic] ratings were divided into 5 periods: prodrome, preictal, early postictal, late postictal, interictal. The only comparison with enough data for analysis was between prodromal and interictal (N=7). There was significantly more unactivated negative affect, [italic]p [/italic]= .026, and less activated positive affect,[italic] p[/italic] = .056, in the prodromal period. Finding that retrospective ratings were more positive than momentary ratings suggests that retrospective ratings may not accurately capture how patients feel at specific times. Retrospective ratings can suffer from forgetting, as well as biasing effects, such as recency and halos. The finding of more negative and less positive affect in the prodrome than in the interictal period is consistent with a prior study that obtained mood ratings. This suggests that the biological mechanisms responsible for seizures may also be responsible for negative affect. (Supported by Albrecht/FSU Epilepsy Fund)