Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on a Sense of Hope and Belief to the Just World in Patients with Breast Cancer

Cancer crises cause imbalance of mind and body, but most of the time for the patient is a feeling of despair and hopelessness. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on the hope and belief in a just world in patients with breast cancer.

The quasi-experimental research method was pretest-posttest design with control group. The population of the study included all women with breast cancer in Tehran. 40 of them were selected by convenience sampling. They were then randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups. The data collection tools included Adel Robin and Pplawprenham (2003) Belief in World Question and Herth Life Expectancy Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance.

The results showed a steady increase in the scores of the Hope and Belief in a Fair World Scale for Patients with Breast Cancer, indicating the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy in increasing these variables.

Disappointment plays a predisposing, accelerating, and persistent role in cancer, and acceptance and commitment therapy can play an important role as adjunctive and rehabilitative therapies alongside medical treatments.