Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Group Therapy on Physical and Psychological Symptoms of Elderly Women

Elderly people face with many physical and psychological problems and acceptance and commitment treatment is one of the effective therapeutic methods in improving physical and psychological problems and features. Therefore, present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment group therapy on physical and psychological symptoms of elderly women.

In a one quasi-experimental research, 24 people of elderly women referred to two Yas Home and Shayan Armans’ rehabilitation centers of Tehran city in 2017 year were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned into two equal groups (each group 12 people). The experimental group trained by acceptance and commitment group therapy method and the control group didn’t receive training. The research instruments were the questionnaires of multidimensional performance measures, geriatric depression and psychological well-being. Data were analyzed in the SPSS-22 software by multivariate analysis of covariance method.

The findings showed that the acceptance and commitment group therapy led to improve the activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, depression and psychological well-being of elderly women (p<0/05), but there was no significant effect on their physical health (p<0/05).

According to the results, it is recommended that used from the acceptance and commitment group therapy method along with other therapeutic methods to interventions in the field of elderly women health, especially for improve their physical and psychological symptoms.