Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on the Signs of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Thought-Action Fusion in the Students with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a serious problem which damages adolescents’ psychological, communicative, social, and emotional processes. But whether acceptance and commitment therapy could improve the syndrome of this disorder?

The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on the OCD syndrome and thought-action fusion in the students suffering from OCD.

The present study was a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and control group and a two-month follow-up phase. The statistical population of the study included the students with OCD in the city of Isfahan in the academic year 2017-2018.  In the present research, 30 middle school students with OCD were selected through purposive sampling and were placed randomly into experimental and control groups.  Experimental group were applied acceptance and commitment therapy.  In the study, the Maudsley obsessive-compulsive inventory (Hajson and Rachman, 1980) and the thought-action fusion scale (Shefran et.al, 2004) were used. The data were analyzed through the repeated measures ANOVA.

The results showed that ACT significantly influenced OCD syndrome and thought-action fusion in the students with OCD (p<0/001).

based of the above findings acceptance and commitment therapy can improve the syndrome of obsessive-compulsive disorder in adolescents.