Assessing the Impact of Brief CBTi on Dissociative Seizures: SCED

Summary

Some people experience a temporary change in behaviour and consciousness, that often involves a collapse and/or shaking limb movements. These are referred to as 'Dissociative seizures'. Those who experience such seizures have been found to also display high levels of dissociation, which can be described as a change in your conscious experience and may include gaps in your memory for events. It is thought that people who experience dissociative seizures also often have difficulties with their sleep. Having difficulties with sleep may make these seizures and the amount of dissociation an individual experiences worse. Greater dissociation may be additionally linked to worsening dissociative seizures. A psychological treatment for sleep difficulties called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi), has been found to be effective in reducing sleep difficulties.

The main questions this study aims to answer are:

1. Does brief CBTi (bCBTi) improve sleep difficulties in those with dissociative seizures?
2. Does bCBTi reduce the frequency of dissociative seizures?
3. Does bCBTi reduce self-reported levels of dissociation in participants?
4. Does improving sleep difficulties lead to improvements in quality of life, mood and anxiety levels?
5. Is bCBTi a feasible intervention to administer in an inpatient setting?

This study will investigate whether improving sleep by administering a brief version of CBTi leads to an improvement in levels of dissociation and dissociative seizure frequency. It will also investigate whether brief CBTi is a feasible treatment method for sleep difficulties in an inpatient setting.

Participants who have dissociative seizures and sleep difficulties that could be diagnosed as insomnia will be randomly assigned to a baseline phase of 5, 7 or 9 days, where they will fill out daily questionnaires on their sleep, dissociation and number of seizures. They will then begin a 10-day intervention phase where they will attend two sessions of brief CBTi, whilst also completing daily measures. This will allow us to see whether their scores on the sleep and dissociation measures improve when the intervention begins. Participants will be asked to wear an Actiwatch during the night, to gather information on their movement levels during the night. Information on changes in quality of life, mood and anxiety levels following the sleep intervention will also be collected.

Conditions

• Dissociative Seizures
• Functional Seizures
• Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures
• Insomnia
• Dissociation
• Sleep Disorder

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

brief Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (bCBTi)

Two sessions of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia, encompassing a cognitive therapy technique and a behavioural technique as a minimum.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• William Quarriers Scottish Epilepsy Centre

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Glasgow

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Dr Jessica Fish, BSc, PhD, DClinPsy · University of Glasgow

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-05-06

Primary Completion

2024-12-30

Completion

2025-03-29

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations