Comparing the Effects of Logotherapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Happiness in Escapee and Bad Caregivers’ Girls

 Running away from home is a major social problem, worldwide. In Iran, girls running away from home has become a social harm issue. Escaping and staying away from home, leaving family members without parent’s or legal executor permission, and unreturning to home is a reaction to unfavorable, unbearable, and sometimes immutable conditions. It usually occurs for reducing the unpleasantness and overcoming annoying and harmful stimuli in achieving the desired wishes or due to home and family’s unpleasant environmental conditions, also a lack of security. Thus, providing psychological interventions to improve this condition is critical. The present study aimed to compare the effects of logotherapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on happiness in escapee and bad caregivers’ girls in the State Welfare Organization (SWO).

 This was a quasi–experimental study with a multi–group pretest–posttest design. The study statistical population was all escapee and bad caregivers’ girls in the SWO centers in Tehran City, Iran, in 2020. Using the simple random sampling method, 60 eligible individuals (inclusion criteria: no psychological problems, basic literacy to complete the questionnaires; exclusion criterion: unwillingness to participate in the research) were selected and randomly assigned into 3 study groups (logotherapy, ACT, & control; n=20/group). To collect the required data, the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Argyle et al., 1989) was used. The logotherapy group received eight 90–minute weekly sessions based on the package of logotherapy of Schulenberg et al. (2010); the ACT group underwent ten 90–minute weekly sessions per the package of Hayes and Strosahl (2004). However, the control group received no intervention. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including mean and standard deviation as well as inferential statistics, including Chi–squares test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), univariate Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS at a significance level of 0.01.

 The obtained results revealed a significant difference between the logotherapy, ACT, and control groups on happiness (p<0.001); the related effect size was measured as 0.828. Thus, logotherapy and ACT increased happiness in the experimental groups, compared to the control group. Furthermore, the difference between the mean scores of happiness of the control and the logotherapy groups (p<0.001), the control and the ACT groups (p<0.001), and the logotherapy and the ACT groups (p<0.001) was significant.

 According to the current research findings, ACT and logotherapy impacted happiness in the study samples; however, the effectiveness of logotherapy was significantly greater than that of ACT in this respect.