The effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on the rate of chronic pain and pain catastrophizing in women with chronic low back pain

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is one of the third wave behavioral therapies in treating of chronic pain. The purpose of present research was to study the effectiveness of ACT on the rate of pain and pain catastrophizing in females with chronic low back pain. This was a semi-xperimental research, and a pre-test, post-test design with control group was applied. Participants included 40 women with chronic low back pain that selected by convenience sampling method from three clinical centers and randomly assigned into control and experimental groups. All participants completed the Multidimensional pain inventory-screening and pain catastrophizing scale. Thenthe experimental group received ACT for 8 one-hour sessions. Results of covariance analysis indicated that there is a considerable improvement in pain catastrophizing and its subscale and pain and its subscale (except pain intensity) in experimental group in posttest stage. According to the results, ACT can decrease the pain and experienced psychological distresses in women with chronic low back pain and represents new horizons in clinical interventions and can be used as an appropriate intervention.