Comparison of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and compassion-focused therapy (CFT) on quality of life in patients with vitiligo

Researchs shows that the physical and psychological effects of obvious skin conditions such as vitiligo, affect the quality of life of patients. Although in the past, compassion-focused therapy has led to positive emotional regulation, reduction of negative emotions, and self-blame, as well as acceptance - commitment therapy led to mindfulness, acceptance of feelings, and calmness in the face of illness, but there is a research gap exists in the impact of these therapies on the quality of life of women with vitiligo.

This research was performed to compare The Efficacy of compassion focused therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy on quality of life in women patient with vitiligo.

The research method was quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test and follow-up with control group. The study population consisted of all women with vitiligo who referred to Razi Hospital in Tehran in 2020, which 45 people were purposefully selected after controlling the entry and exit criteria and randomly divided into 3 groups of 15 people (two experimental groups and A control group). The measurement tool was the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (1993). For the first experiment group, the acceptance and commitment ‌therapy ‌of hyse et al(2016), and for the second experiment group, the compassion focused therapy (Gilbert, 2009, 2014) were delivered in groups and in eight 120-minute sessions, but the control group received no intervention. In order to test the research hypotheses, descriptive statistics and mixed analysis of variance were used by SPSS20 software.

Showed that all three groups in the pre-test stage were not significantly different from each other except that the physical health of the control group was higher than the compassion group. Also, the difference between the acceptance-commitment and compassion-based therapy group with the control group in quality of life and all its components in the post-test and follow-up stages was significant (p <0.01) except for one case in the living environment component, it was not significant with the control group in the post-test. In physical health and social relationship, the difference between the two experimental groups of acceptance- commitment and compassion group in the post-test and follow-up stages was not significant (p <0.01). In mental health, living environment and overall quality of life in the post-test and follow-up stages, the difference between the two experimental groups was significant and showed a more effect of acceptance and commitment therapy. Except for the overall quality of life, there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups in the post-test.

According to the obtained results, it is concluded that the therapy is based on acceptance and commitment by accepting emotions and preventing the avoidance of experience and shaping committed practice and healthy habits and Compassion-focused therapies by changing mental interpretations of blame and criticism and enhancing kindness to themselves and others, improve patients' quality of life.