The efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on women's emotional empathy and forgiveness

In the pathology and treatment of veterans' spouses, various therapeutic interventions have been designed and implemented to improve their psychological condition in the form of interventional studies. Research revealed that methods of cognitive restructuring treatments such as acceptance and commitment therapy can help veterans' spouses. Based on the studies, the researches targeting this issue are very limited.

This research was conducted with the aim of investigating the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy on emotional empathy and forgiveness in women with veteran spouses.

The research method was applied in a semi-experimental way with a pre-test-post-test design and a one-month follow-up with a control group. From the statistical population of veterans' spouses who referred to counseling centers in Piranshahr city in 2019, 30 people were selected by purposive sampling and randomly replaced in two groups of 15 people. In order to collect information, emotional empathy scale and marital forgiveness scale were used. The experimental group received the acceptance and commitment treatment program (Hayes and Estrosahel, 2010) in thirteen two-hour sessions with one session every week, and the control group did not receive any intervention. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and analysis of variance test with repeated measurements.

The results of the research showed that the treatment based on acceptance and commitment made significant changes in the variables of emotional empathy and forgiveness in the experimental and control groups (P<0.05).

Based on the findings of this research, it can be concluded that the designed program based on acceptance and commitment increases the emotional empathy and forgiveness of veterans' spouses. Therefore, the use of the mentioned treatment is strongly recommended by the consultants of the target community of this research.