Efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on the Emotional Distress and Commitment to Treatment in Diabetic Patients with Depression

The present study was conducted to investigate the efficacy of acceptance and commitment based therapy on the emotional distress and Commitment to Treatment in diabetic patients with depression. The present study was quasi-experimental with pretest, posttest, control group and three-month follow-up period design. The statistical population included type-2 diabetic people with depression who referred to therapy centers of Isfahan in spring and summer of 2022. 33 diabetic patients with depression were selected through purposive sampling method and were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received acceptance and commitment based therapy sessions (Ten sessions) during Ten weeks. The applied questionnaires included Depression Questionnaire (DQ) (Beck, Epstein, Brown, Steer, 1996) Emotional Distress Questionnaire (EDQ)(Kessler, et.al, 2002) and Commitment to Treatment Questionnaire (TCQ) (Morisky, Ang, Krousel-Wood, Ward, 2008). The data from the study were analyzed through mixed ANOVA and Bonferroni follow-up test using SPSS 23 statistical software. The results showed that acceptance and commitment based therapy has significant effect on the depression, emotional distress and Commitment to Treatment in diabetic patients with depression (p<0001) and leads to the decrease of depression and emotional distress and improvement of Commitment to Treatment in these patients. According to the findings of the present study, ACT can be used as an efficient method to decrease emotional distress and improve Commitment to Treatment in the diabetic patients with depression through employing six main processes of acceptance, fusion, observer self, relationship with the present time, value and committed action.