The effectiveness of treatment based on acceptance and commitment on the psychological distress and fear of disease progression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is a preexisting chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease with a prevalence of 0.5 to 2.4 percent in the world. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on the psychological distress and fear of disease progression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

this quasi-experimental clinical trial study was performed on 30 people with rheumatoid arthritis selected through purposive sampling and randomly assigned in tow groups, experimental and control (n= 15 persons) the intervention was implemented 8 session per week is a one-half hour session in the experimental group. Data were collected using Psychological distress questionnaire (DASS) and fear of disease progression and analysis was done by SPSS-22 software. Descriptive and inferential statistics and repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test were used.

Results of repeated measure ANOVA showed significant difference between the two groups in mean depression and stress (P> 0.05). Anxiety scores were not significantly different between the two groups (P <0.05). Bonferroni post hoc test results showed a significant difference between the stress, depression and fear of disease progression in the pre-test, post-test and follow-up.

the results indicate the effect of ACT on the psychological distress and fear of disease progression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis; therefore, this treatment can be used as a complementary treatment, along with medication, to improve the quality of life of these patients