Resilience predicts and modulates anxiety severity in people with epilepsy

Anxiety is one of the most relevant psychiatric comorbidities in people with epilepsy (PwE). The role of resilience (RES) in the development of anxiety is not well understood. We purposed to better characterize RES impact on anxiety severity in PwE.

One hundred and seventy-six PwE underwent online surveys including a collection of socio-demographic, seizure-related, and psychological variables. PwE were grouped according to the data collected; anxiety levels were compared through non-parametric statistics. Hierarchical regression analysis (HRA) and logistic regression were performed to characterize RES contribute in predicting the presence and the severity of anxiety. Mediation/moderation analysis was performed to evaluate causal effects among RES, depression, and anxiety.

Anxiety did not differ according to socio-demographic and seizure-related variables, exemption for the presence of drug-related adverse effects. Depression, RES, and sleep quality provided the major contribute on anxiety variance. The addiction of RES level in HRA and logistic regression provided a significant increase of R-squared value (p-value = 0.02) and of area under the curve (p-value = 0.03), respectively. RES modulated depression/anxiety relationship (p-value < 0.001), whereas depression did not mediate RES/anxiety correlation (p-value = 0.68).

We demonstrated that RES is a significant independent predictor of anxiety in PwE and is able to modulate depression impact on anxiety. Moreover, we confirmed the relevance of depression and sleep quality on anxiety severity.