Treatment Based on Acceptance and Commitment and Spirituality of Religious Therapy in a Group Method Improvement of the Severity of Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms and Obsessive Beliefs and Quality of Life in People with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disabling disorder that causes disturbance and significant interference in the individual function. This disorder is thought to be caused by unwanted and intrusive mental thoughts and images that are considered meaningless, inappropriate and irresistible by the individual, as well as the tendency to determine to neutralize and compensate for these thoughts and mental images. The onset of this disorder is usually between early adolescence and early adulthood. Among treatments, a method that has been more relevant in recent years, treatment is based on acceptance and commitment. Generally, disorders that do not require interacting with inner experiences (thoughts, emotions, memories and physical emotions) that it mainly called "experiential avoidance". Due to the importance of obsessive–compulsive disorder, it needs to test new therapeutic considering religious beliefs. These techniques in spiritual therapy can have behavioral, cognitive, metacognitive, emotional and moral aspects, and can be manifested in religious concepts and behaviors such as trust, patience, prayer, meditation. Given these points, the use of human spiritual capacity in the treatment of obsessive–compulsive disorders is not only effective but also necessary. Religious psychotherapy can have significant effects on the treatment of depression and obsession because religious people are less likely to feel alone and less depression and anxiety than non–religious people. Addressing the impact of religion on health in the various, supply of human life, including health care, is important because it has an unmatched and indispensable role in human life. Therefore, knowing about the effectiveness of the therapeutic methods from religious teachings can be used to treatment of anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorders. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of treatment based on acceptance and commitment and spiritual therapy on the improvement of the severity of obsessive–compulsive symptoms and quality of life in patients with obsessive–compulsive and obsessive–compulsive disorder.

The research was quasi–experimental, pre–test, post–test and follow–up with the control group. Forty–five obsessive–compulsive patients from the Qom (Qom province, center of Iran) consultation center in 2012 were selected by convenience sampling. In the beginning of the study, the subjects were investigated by questionnaires that include the practice of religious beliefs (Golzzari, 2001), Yale Brown obsession (Goodman et al., 1989), obsessive beliefs of OBQ–44 (OCCWG, 2005) and quality of life (SF36) (Farnish, 2005). The experimental group received 14 sessions of 60 minutes of group therapy based on acceptance and commitment and spirituality therapy. Data were analyzed by repeated measure ANOVA and post Hoc.

Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) of the three groups. The mean scores of the obsessive–compulsive scales and the mean scores of obsessive–compulsive beliefs and quality of life questionnaires in both treatment groups decreased and this decrease in follow–up was also seen. Findings of this study indicated that treatment based on acceptance and commitment and spirituality therapy in pretest posttest and fallow up had a significant different on obsessive–compulsive symptoms and observerchr('39')s beliefs and quality of life (p<0.001). In addition, results of Post HOC test on the comparison of therapeutic methods showed that spirituality therapy was more effective than treatment–based acceptance and commitment to the improvement of obsessive–compulsive symptoms, obsessive–compulsive beliefs and quality of life.

Results of posttest and follow up in the experimental group showed the effect of interventions and it can be concluded that spirituality and acceptance therapy and commitment to reduce the symptoms and obsessive beliefs and improve the quality of life of people with obsessive–compulsive disorder.