Comparing the Effects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Meta-cognitive Therapy on Blood Pressure in Hemodialysis Patients

Dialysis patients encounter numerous psychological distress, aggravating their psycho-social problems. Currently, the third wave of psychological treatment has surpassed other treatments in solving the problems of these patients. The current study aimed to compare the effects of metacognitive therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on blood pressure in hemo-dialysis patients.

This was a randomized clinical trial with pre-test, post-test and follow-up and a control group design. This research was performed on 54 patients undergoing hemodialysis at Imam Ali Hospital in Karaj City, Iran. The study participants were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly divided into three groups; metacognitive therapy, ACT, and control. The intervention groups individu-ally received metacognitive therapy and ACT for 8 sessions. All research groups were measured in the pre-test, post-test stage and their blood pressure was measured using a hand sphygmomanometer. The collected data were analyzed using repeated-measures Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA).

The current research results indicated that metacognitive therapy and ACT were effective in re-ducing blood pressure among the study subjects (P=0.001). Additionally, the achieved results remained consistent in the follow-up phase.

According to the collected results, the provided interventions can be used as useful and complementary therapies along with pharmacotherapy and other evidence-based interventions for in-dividuals with hypertension receiving dialysis.