The effect of acceptance and commitment based on the fear of delivery pain- A randomized educational trial study

Pregnancy due to physiological and psychological changes can affect the mental health of mothers.
This study aims to investigate the Approach of acceptance and commitment based on the fear of delivery pain.

This study was a randomized educational trial with a commitment-based treatment approach that was performed on pregnant women in Arak in 2016-2017. After obtaining written consent forms, 42 subjects were selected through the available sampling method. Subjects were grouped in the intervention group (ACT) and in the control group. Eight 90-minute sessions were held for 8 consecutive weeks of counseling Fear of delivery pain at 10 and one month after the intervention was measured in 2 groups by the Likert scale of pain (1-7) score. Data analysis was performed through repeated measure ANOVA by using SPSS (Version 18).

Results showed that the mean pain immediately after the intervention was 2.52±2.20 in the intervention group and 4.66±1.80 in the control group. Which is a month later in the intervention group compared to the control group had a significant decrease (3.52±1.81 vs. 4.52±2.30) (P=0.001).

In this study, counseling with the approach of acceptance and commitment reduction the fear of delivery pain, which is the most important reason for choosing cesarean section in women, Therefore, it seems that empowering midwives to counseling approaches can be useful to improve maternal care during pregnancy, especially in the administration of delivery preparation classes.