Effectiveness of Group Therapy based on Acceptance and Commitment on Cognitive Abilities of Students with Type D Personality

Present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of group therapy based on acceptance and commitment on cognitive abilities of students with type D personality.

This study was semi-experimental with a pretest, posttest and follow-up design with control group. The research population was students with type D personality of institute applied science higher education of Semnan Jahad University in 2017-18 academic years. After examining type D personality among students number of 70 people were selected and from them 30 people were selected by simple random sampling method and randomly replaced into two equal groups. The experimental group 12 sessions of 90 minute underwent group therapy based on acceptance and commitment and the control group did not see any training. Data were collected by type D personality scale (Denollet, 2005) and cognitive abilities (Nejati, 2013) and analyzed with chi-square, repeated measures and post hoc Bonferroni test in SPSS-19 software.

The findings showed that the experimental and control groups did not significant difference in terms of marriage and education level (P>0.05). Also, the group therapy based on acceptance and commitment improved cognitive abilities and all its dimensions including memory, inhibitory control and selective attention, decision making, planning, sustain attention, social cognition and cognitive flexibility and the treatment results were maintained in the follow-up stage (p < 0.05).

According to the results, planning is necessary for the use of group therapy based on acceptance and commitment to improve the characteristics of students with type D personality. As a result, therapists and clinical psychologists can use group therapy based on acceptance and commitment along with other treatment methods to improve cognitive characteristics