Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Academic Procrastination, Resilience, and Depression in Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is one of the third generation behavioral therapies in the treatment of childhood and adolescent disorders that has recently received much attention. However, its effectiveness, especially among adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), with problems such as procrastination, swings and depression, has not been much noticed. The aim of present study was to investigate effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on academic procrastination, resilience, and depression in students withADHD.

To this aim, in a pretest-posttest with control group quasi-experimental study, 28 students were selected purposively and randomly divided into experiment or control groups (13 in ACT group and 15 in control group). Conners rating scale, Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II, Beck, 1996), Solomon students and academic procrastination version Roth Bloom (1984 ), and Conner- Davidson Resilience scale (CD-RISC, Beck,1996) were completed before interventions by all participants and then participants of experiment group individually received a 10-session ACT intervention, while control group received no intervention. After completing the intervention, once more, the instruments were administered.

The results of Covaraince analysis showed that in the three variables of academic procrastination, resilience, and depression, after controlling the covariate variable (pre-test scores) there were significant differences among the two groups (depression: f=14/81; p < 0/001; resilience: f=9/84; p < 0/001; academic procrastination: f=15/15; p < 0/001).

According to the results, ACT is an effective and promising intervention on academic procrastination, resilience, and depression in students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD)