The Impact of Acceptance and Commitment-Based Therapy (ACT) on Thought Control Strategies among People with War-Caused PTSD

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of acceptance and commitment-based therapy (ACT) on thought control strategies among patients with war-caused posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Sari, Iran.
This is an experimental study with a pretest-posttest and control group design. The population consisted of the veterans enlisted in Martyrs Foundation (Bonyad Shahid) in Sari who were diagnosed with PTSD. A sample of 28 patients was randomly selected and placed into two groups of 14 cases as the experimental group and 14 cases as the control group. Both groups were tested before the experiment. Then the acceptance and commitment-based therapy was conducted on the experimental group during eight 120-minute sessions per week. The data collection instrument was the Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ; Wells and Davies, 1994) whose validity was confirmed and its reliability was worked out to be 0.81. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive and inferential statistics.
The results of covariance analysis revealed that acceptance and commitment-based therapy impacts on thought control strategies.
Acceptance and commitment-based therapy affects refusal, punishment, re-evaluation, anxiety, and social control. In other words, it can be said that this kind of treatment was continued in the follow-up stage and significantly affected thought control strategies of the people with PTSD.