The effect of acceptance and commitment therapy on psychological flexibility and emotion regulation in divorced women

 Divorce, is the cause of family breakdown that has many consequences for individuals and can be the source of many psychological and social injuries. This study aimed to investigate the effect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on psychological, flexibility and emotional regulation in divorced women.

 This is a semi-experimental research with mixed-method design and a two-month follow-up, among divorced women referred to counseling centers in Tehran, 38 participants were selected through purposed sampling. Participants entering the research process, were randomly assigned into two experimental and control groups through Excel Office software. ACT treatment was given to the experimental group for eight weekly two-hour sessions. The data of this study were collected through emotion regulation and acceptance and action questionnaire in three time periods with use of SPSS (ver: 22) software; analyzed by repeated measure analysis of variance.

 Acceptance and commitment therapy had a significant effect on the psychological flexibility (P<0.001) indexes and all six components of emotional regulation, including: non-acceptance of emotional responses, difficulty engaging in goal-directed behavior, impulse control difficulties, lack of emotional awareness, limited access to emotion regulation strategies, and lack of emotional clarity (P<0.001). Besides, the results were also stable until the two-month follow-up (P<0.001).

 According to this study, ACT therapy can be used to treat and increase the psychological flexibility and emotion regulation of divorced women.