The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on psychological distress in people with prostate cancer

The relationship between cancer and psychological adjustment and health-related behaviors is an important issue that is widely discussed in the world. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment based therapy on psychological distress in patients with prostate cancer.

In this quasi-experimental research, the study population included all patients with prostate cancer who referred to Labbafinejad and Shohada-e-Tajrish hospitals in Tehran in 2019. Accordingly, 40 participants were selected by the available sampling method and then randomly assigned into two experimental (n=20) and control groups (n=20). The study was performed in two qualitative and quantitative stages. Focused group discussion was used to identify the psychological problems. Acceptance and commitment therapy was performed in eight 90-minute sessions in the experimental group. The data collection tool was the standard DASS 21 psychological distress questionnaire. Mixed design with repeated measurement test was used for data analysis in SPSS ver. 26 software.

The results showed that the interaction effect of intergroup, intragroup, and interactive changes for the variables of depression (F=84.530), anxiety (F=73.949), and stress (F=71.958) was significant at P-Value<0.01 level. This indicates that acceptance and commitment therapy has been able to significantly reduce depression, anxiety, and stress in the experimental group.

Considering the effect of commitment-based therapy and acceptance intervention in reducing the psychological distress in the experimental group, this intervention can be used to reduce psychological distress in cancer patients.