Making Mindfulness Matter© in Children With Epilepsy

Summary

Epilepsy is a debilitating condition characterized by spontaneous, unprovoked seizures. Up to 80% of children with epilepsy (CWE) may face cognitive, psychiatric, and/or behavioral comorbidities with significant unmet mental health needs. Mindfulness-based interventions may provide an ideal vector to target unmet mental healthcare needs in patients with epilepsy and their families. The investigators propose the Making Mindfulness Matter© (M3) program as an intervention to improve health related quality of life and mental-health for CWE and their parents. M3 is live-online parent and child program that incorporates mindful awareness, social-emotional learning skills, neuroscience, and positive psychology. This pilot RCT is needed to refine the implementation of the intervention to families with a child with epilepsy, and collect information pertaining to the feasibility and effectiveness of the intervention in preparation for a subsequent multi-centred trial across Canada. Note: Due to COVID-19, the format has been modified for online delivery (from community-based) and the intervention has been restarted.

Conditions

• Epilepsy in Children
• Mindfulness
• Quality of Life

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Making Mindfulness Matter© (M3)

Making Mindfulness Matter© (M3) is an interactive online parent and child program that incorporates mindful awareness, social-emotional learning skills, neuroscience, and positive psychology. This program was modelled after the school-based MindUP™ program for use in the community and augmented to integrate a parent component. M3E is a facilitator-led program that integrates attitudes, skills, and behaviours related to mindfulness and social-emotional learning (SEL). During the 8-week concurrent parent and child manualized program, parents learn the same core principles as children: how our brains work, stress and the brain, mindful breathing, mindful sensing, mindful movement, perspective taking, optimism, and gratitude/acts of kindness.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute OR Lawson Research Institute of St. Joseph's

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Kathy Nixon Speechley, Ph.D · Western University

• Klajdi Puka, Ph.D · CAMH

• Karen Bax, Ph.D · Western University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

4 Years

Max Age

10 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-12-02

Primary Completion

2023-04-11

Completion

2023-04-11

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations