One in five individuals living with epilepsy suffer from emotional disorders. These disorders reduce quality of life (QoL), reduce seizure remission rates, and increase morbidity and mortality. There is some evidence that psychotherapies can help but we lack understanding of their efficacy in drug-resistant epilepsy. Moreover, we know individuals rarely fit into neat diagnostic “boxes”, which suggests it may be more efficient in terms of time and resources to address common emotional and cognitive patterns underlying multiple psychiatric disorders.

Our pilot study will be the first to 1) rigorously quantify psychiatric comorbidities and QoL in drug-resistant epilepsy and 2) test a transdiagnostic psychotherapy, the Unified Protocol (UP), in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.