The Effect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Emotional Regulation and Coping Strategies in Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Studies have shown that cognitive emotion regulation and the type of coping strategy are among the factors that are effective in coping with stress and anxiety. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on emotion regulation and coping strategies for patients with generalized anxiety disorder

The design of this study was quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test with control group. The statistical population of the study consisted of all patients with generalized anxiety disorder aged 13 to 15 years referring to Psychology and Counseling Centers in Tehran in 2017. From this papulation, 30 patients were selected using purposeful sampling and were randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups (15 in each group). The experimental group received acceptance and commitment treatment for 8 sessions and the control group did not receive this intervention. Research data were collected using Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) and coping styles (Jarvis, 1993). Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data.

The results showed that acceptance and commitment therapy had a significant effect on the emotion regulation components and coping styles of the experimental group (P <0.01). Also, the effect size of the cognitive emotion regulation variable was 49%, repression 53%, problem solving factor 79%, and emotion regulation factor 83%.

Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the commitment and acceptance treatment method teaches people how to deal with events purposefully, effectively and efficiently, and thus helps them to better understand their capacities and abilities to respond and to employ better ways to overcome stressful situations.