Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Interpersonal Dependency and Action Control of Individuals with Dependent Personality Disorder

Dependent personality disorder is a chronic disorder which associated with the need to be taken care of. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on decreasing interpersonal dependency and increasing action control of individuals with dependent personality disorder. This study conducted semi-experimentally with pretest-posttest control group design and two-month follow up period. From all individuals with dependent personality disorder who attended to psychotherapy clinics of Shahre-Ghods and District 22 Municipality of Tehran, 18 individuals were selected via convenience sampling method and then randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups (with 9 members). Dependent Personality Disorder Inventory-Revised (2007), Interpersonal Dependency Inventory (1977), and Action Control Scale-Revised (2000) were applied to collect data. The members of experimental group were treated via the use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy protocol in 11 sessions, each lasted 70 minutes. Eventually, data were analyzed through repeated measures analysis of variance. Findings showed that acceptance and commitment therapy has significant effect on decreasing interpersonal dependency and increasing action control of individuals with dependent personality disorder (P<0.01). According to the results of this study, implementation of ACT in psychotherapy centers and clinics would be beneficial and effective for treating personality disorders’ problems.