The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on anxiety and quality of life in patients with non-cardiac chest pain

Psychological reasons can cause and perpetuate non-cardiac chest pain. They are of particular importance because psychological factors can cause and exacerbate non-cardiac chest pain.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on anxiety and quality of life in patients with non-cardiac chest pain. 

This study is of a quasi-experimental type. The statistical population of this research is patients referred to Dr. Abbas Nabavi Cardiovascular Clinic, Dezful during the year 2021 with non-cardiac pain in their chest. The statistical sample of this work includes 30 patients that are chosen based on the purposive sampling method and divided into two groups, namely control and experimental. Beck Anxiety inventory and SF-36 Quality of Life inventory are used for data collection. Multivariate analysis of covariance, repeated measures of variance, and are applied in three stages of pre-test, post-test, and follow-up, using SPSS software (version 26).

Results indicated that the average of anxiety and life quality in pretest-posttest changed from 29.86±4.06 to 12.4 ± 4.03 and from 47.60 ± 10.06 to 79.73 ± 8.87. Based on the covariance method, in the post-test stage, 62%, and in the follow-up stage, 43% of differences in anxiety and quality of life between two groups were because of the acceptance and commitment therapy method (P≤0.05). Bonferroni test indicated an increase in anxiety level during the follow-up stage (P≤0.05).

According to the research results, it can be concluded that with the help of acceptance and commitment therapy, psychological disorders that cause non-cardiac chest pain can be reduced.