Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on Academic Performance of Veteran's Children

Aims: The stress caused by the violent experiences of war not only creates problems for the veterans, but also their families and children are indirectly affected by the psychological stresses of the war. Children educational problems and, consequently, the educational performance of these students is one of the problems in school. This research aimed to determine the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with emphasis on educational problems on Academic performance of veteran's children.
Instrument & In this semi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test and follow-up design, 30 male high-school students who were veteran's children, were studied in Ardakan city in the academic year of 2015-16. They were selected by purposive sampling and were randomly assigned in experimental (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. First, all participants completed the academic performance questionnaire as a pre-test scores.The experimental group received 8 sessions of the intervention weekly (2 hours), but there was no intervention for the control group. After intervention and two months later, all participants answered to academic performance questionnaire again. Data were analyzed by SPSS 21 software using repeated measures ANOVA and Benfronny's post hoc test.
Findings: Academic performance scores at the post-test in the experimental group were significantly higher than the control group and the improvement maintained in follow-up stage (p Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with emphasis on educational problems affects on academic performance of veteran's children.