The effectiveness of treatment based on acceptance and commitment on voluntary self-regulation, distress tolerance and psychological flexibility in people with substance abuse disorder undergoing maintenance treatment

Drug abuse is at the top of threats and social harms and is one of the saddest problems of today's societies, which is the source of many misbehavior and crimes and is influenced by many psychological factors. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of acceptance and commitment-based treatment on voluntary self-regulation, distress tolerance and psychological flexibility in people with substance abuse disorder undergoing maintenance treatment. The current research was semi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with experimental and control groups. The statistical population of the study included all men aged 20 to 45 with substance abuse disorder under maintenance treatment who referred to addiction treatment centers in Rabat Karim city from March 2020 to June 2021.Among them, a sample of 36 people was selected using cluster random sampling method and randomly replaced in two groups (18 people in the experimental group and 18 people in the control group). The data collection tools in the present study included voluntary self-regulation questionnaire (Freund and Baltz, 2002), distress tolerance questionnaire (Simmons and Gaher, 2005) and acceptance and action questionnaire (Bond et al., 2011). The experimental group underwent 10 sessions of therapy based on acceptance and commitment (Hayes, 2004). Data analysis was done using covariance analysis in SPSS22 environment. The findings showed that the treatment based on acceptance and commitment is effective in all three variables of voluntary self-regulation, distress tolerance and psychological flexibility in the experimental group (p<0.0001) and the average of the experimental group in the post-test is significantly higher than the average of the control group ( p<0.0001).The results showed that the treatment based on acceptance and commitment is effective in improving voluntary self-regulation, distress tolerance and psychological flexibility of people with substance abuse disorder under maintenance treatment; Therefore, the treatment based on acceptance and commitment can be used along with other existing treatment approaches as a suitable option for people with substance abuse and as a result reduce delinquency and the material and spiritual costs of military and judicial institutions.