The impact of acceptance and commitment therapy on reducing of depression and anxiety in patients with type-1 diabetes

Diabetes is a widespread, malignant and progressive disease. People who suffer from diabetes experience different psychological and physical disorders during and after treatment. This paper was done to study the effectiveness of treatment based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on decreasing depression and anxiety symptoms in patients with diabetes type-1.
The quasi-experimental method with control and experimental group, which is based on pre and post tests was used in this study. After completing the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) questionnaire, 20 participants who had the criteria for this research, were chosen and divided into two groups of 10, experimental and control (waiting for treatment) group. Experimental group recevied eight sessions of intervention of ACT and no intervention was done for control group. Data were analyzed by analysis of covariance with repeated measurements using SPSS-20 software.
The findings showed that intervention based on ACT caused a significant reduction (p=0.01) in depression and anxiety symptoms in experimental group compared to the control group. So that subjects’ scores in experimental group had more meaningful reduction than the control group.
The results of this research showed that treatment based on acceptance and commitment therapy can be effective on decreasing depression and anxiety symptoms of patients with diabetes type-1.