Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Group Therapy on Psychological Stress, Loneliness and Blood Glucose In Patients With Diabetes

Psychological treatments include those treatments that can reduce the effects of diabetes along with drug interventions. Of course, the use of these therapies requires a lot of empirical support. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of group therapy based on acceptance and commitment on psychological stress, loneliness and blood glucose in diabetic patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes in Rasht.
Determination of Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Group Therapy on Psychological Stress, Loneliness and Blood Glucose in Patients with Diabetes
This applied research is a semi-experimental type with pre-test and post-test design with control group. The study population consisted of all adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes in Rasht city who were referred to hospitals and related treatment centers in the first quarter of 1396 S.H (2017). First, 100 patients filled perceived anxiety questionnaires of Cohen et al (1983) and loneliness questionnaires of Russell et al. (1996), and their blood glucose were measured by glycosylated hemoglobin test. Of them, 30 were purposefully and homogeneously selected from the other features and randomly placed in the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received 8 training sessions of ACT with 90 minutes duration and then the relevant data were collected again. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance test to investigate the hypotheses.
The findings of the MANCOVA test showed that group therapy based on acceptance and commitment improved psychological stress and loneliness of the experimental group and did not reveal a significant difference in blood glucose.
The findings of this study emphasize the effectiveness of group therapy based on acceptance and commitment to reduce psychological stress and loneliness in people with diabetes.