Abstracts

Rationale: Depression and anxiety are the two most common psychological comorbidities in patients with epilepsy. As a result, the development of screening measures for assessing these symptoms is critical so that individuals can be provided with the appropriate psychological treatment. The Neuro-Quality of Life (NQOL) is a set of such self-report measures that assesses the health-related quality of life of individuals diagnosed with neurological disorders. The present study investigates how well the Depression and Anxiety Neuro-QOL measures correlate with an already established objective measure used to assess emotional functioning, the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI).Methods: Participants with epilepsy (N=21) were administered the Depression and Anxiety NQOL measures and the PAI as part of clinical batteries. Pearson product moment correlations were used to determine the relationship between the Depression and Anxiety NQOL measures and PAI (Depression and Anxiety full scale and subscale scores). In addition, one-way ANOVAs were conducted comparing those with clinically elevated levels of depression and anxiety (>65 t-score on the PAI) to profiles which were within normal limits, to detect for differences in reported NQOL scores.Results: Participants were primarily Caucasian (86%), female (62%), were 35.6±2.9 (mean±S.E.M.) years of age and had 13.4±0.6 years of education. Results from the Depression NQOL revealed positive and significant correlations with the PAI full scale Depression score (r=.723; p<0.001) and all PAI Depression subscales including cognitive (r=.714; p<0.001), affective (r=.828; p<0.001), and physiological (r=.471; p=0.03). Results from the Anxiety NQOL revealed positive and significant correlations with the PAI full scale Anxiety score (r=.473; p=0.30) and the PAI Anxiety cognitive (r=.483; p=0.03) and affective (r=.512; p=0.02) subscales whereas the correlation on the physiological subscale was not as strong (r=.329; p=0.15). Those individuals whom had clinically elevated depressive symptoms on the PAI also had significantly higher Depression NQOL scores (24.6 versus 11.3; p<0.001) compared to those profiles that were within normal limits. Similarly, those whom endorsed clinically elevated anxiety on the PAI also had significantly higher Anxiety NQOL scores (24.2 versus 17.2; p=0.02) compared to those profiles that were within normal limits.Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that the NQOL may be an effective screening measure for assessing depression and anxiety in individuals diagnosed with epilepsy due to the strong correlations with the PAI as noted above. As a result of these findings, after increasing the sample size over the next several months, the intention is to determine the optimal Depression and Anxiety NQOL cut-off scores (via sensitivity and specificity analysis), so that providers can make well-informed and objective decisions in clinic as to whether patients should be referred to a mental health practitioner.