Comparing the Effects of Logotherapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Resilience in Girls Who Escaped and Had Bad Caregivers

The phenomenon of escaping and staying away from home, leaving family members without parents’ or legal guardian's permission, and unreturning to home, is a reaction to unfavorable, unbearable, and sometimes immutable conditions. It usually occurs for reducing the unpleasantness and avoiding annoying and harmful stimuli in achieving the desired wishes. It also sometimes occurs due to the unpleasant home and family conditions and the lack of security. In this regard, some characteristics, like resilience can help reduce such a problem by decreasing the tension and stress emanated from difficult living conditions. Thus, providing psychological interventions to improve such conditions is crucial. The present study aimed to compare the effects of logotherapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on resilience among girls who escaped who had bad caregivers, covered by the State Welfare Organization care.

This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest and a control group design. The study population included all girls who escaped and had bad caregivers, covered by the State Welfare care centers in Tehran City, Iran, in 2020. Using the simple random sampling method, 60 eligible individuals (inclusion criteria: having no psychological problems, having basic literacy to answer the questionnaires; exclusion criterion: unwillingness to participate in the research plan) were selected and randomly assigned into 3 study groups (logotherapy, ACT, & control; n=20/group). The logotherapy group received the training package of Schulenberg et al. (2010) in eight 90–minute sessions. The ACT group received therapy based on the training package of Hyes and Strosahl (2004) in ten 90–minute sessions. The control group received no intervention. To collect the necessary data in the pretest and posttest steps, the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD–RISC) was used. To analyze the collected data, descriptive statistics, including mean and standard deviation as well as inferential statistics, including univariate Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), Chi–squared test, Independent Samples t–test, and Bonferroni post hoc test were applied in SPSS. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.01.

The current research results indicated that logotherapy (p<0.001) and ACT (p<0.001) increased resilience in the experimental groups, compared to the controls. Additionally, the mean posttest scores were compared by the Bonferroni post hoc test; the relevant data suggested no significant difference between the mean scores of logotherapy and ACT groups (p=0.082).

The obtained findings indicated that both provided interventions, due to their treatment processes and techniques, significantly improved resilience among the examined females.