Comparison of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Paranoid Thoughts in Women with Postpartum Depression

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy on paranoid thoughts in women with postpartum depression, and the aim was practical. The method of this paper was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design and a 3-month follow-up with the control group. The statistical population included all women with postpartum depression who presented to health centers in the western part of Alborz province in 2019. From the community, 45 of these patients, whose depression was confirmed using the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS), were selected by an available sampling method and by random sampling into two groups for experiments and a control group (15 people in each group) were included. For the pretest-posttest follow-up, all groups voluntarily answered the Persian version of the Green Paranoid Thoughts Scale (GPTS), and members of experimental group 1 received cognitive-behavioral therapy sessions, and members of experimental group 2 received acceptance and commitment therapy. However, the control group received no intervention. Analysis of covariance and Bonferroni test were performed using spss-24 software. The means and standard deviations of paranoid thoughts were 116.76±10.76 at pretest, 106.29±12.31 at posttest, and 99.04±21.38 at follow-up. The mean scores of the cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment groups were also lower than those of the control group at posttest and follow-up. The mean difference between the cognitive-behavioral experimental groups and the control group was not significant (P=0.158), but the mean difference between the acceptance and commitment therapy experimental groups and the control group was significant (P=0.000). The results were repeated in the follow-up mode. Considering the significant efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy, it is recommended that this treatment should be considered as the preferred treatment for reducing paranoid thoughts in women with postpartum depression.