Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Safety Performance, Quality of Life and Somatic Symptoms in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

The aim of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment based therapy on immune function, quality of life and physical symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

This research was an experimental with pre-test, post-test and 90 days later follow-up with the control group. The research sample were selected as available and included 30 patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Using available sampling method with the consent of the patients, They randomly sampled into two groups of 15 experimental and control, using availa be sampling method with the consent of the patients. The experimental group received acceptance and commitment group therapy for 8 sessions, while the control group did not receive any intervention. Both groups were assessed before and after the intervention and in the follow-up stage using quality of life questionnaires, irritable bowel syndrome evaluation questionnaire (Rome IV) and fecal calprotectin test for immune function. Data analysis was performed first by repeated measures analysis of variance and then by repeated measures analysis of variance by considering the protein variable in the pre-test stage as a covariate variable.

In the repeated measures method, the results showed that the effect of time on all three variables of safety function (F = 8.597, P = 0.001), physical condition (F = 63.95, P = 0.0001) and quality of life (F = 65.93, P = 0.0001) is significant. In the method of repeated measures with covariate, the effect of time on the safety performance variable is not significant (F = 0.217, P = 0.645) and it is significant in the variables of physical condition (F = 11.302, P = 0.0001) and quality of life (F = 13.154, P = 0.0001). The results of intergroup test also indicated the significance of the effect of treatment (control and experiment) in all three variables studied in both methods.

The findings of the research showed that acceptance and commitment therapy can play an effective role in reducing physical symptoms and improving patients' immune function and improving their quality of life. Therefore, this treatment is recommended as an adjunctive therapy in patients with irritable bowel syndrome.