Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Self-Compassion and Distress Tolerance in Students with Social Anxiety Disorder

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy to increase self-esteem and endurance distress in students with social anxiety disorder in the second secondary school. Instead of focusing directly on the change in psychological events, this intervention seeks to change the functioning of these events and their relationship with them through strategies such as acceptance or fault cognition. This study was a semi-experimental, pre-test and post-test with the control group. The statistical population included high school students in Tehran; 60 of them were selected and randomly divided into two groups of 30 subjects. Three standard questionnaires of self-esteem, social anxiety, and disturbance tolerance used to measure dependent variables. All statistical stages performed using SPSS software. Data analyzed by multivariate covariance analysis. The findings of this study showed that the acceptance and commitment therapy on students with social anxiety disorder in secondary school, cause increasing in total compassion (F=142.19, η=0.72, p<0.05), and total disturbed tolerance (F=325.88, η=0.86, p<0.05). It can be concluded that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can be used as an effective approach to increasing the mental health of students.