The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on Health-Related Quality of Life in People with Prostate Cancer: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Cancer as a stressful event can have many negative consequences and endanger the various dimensions of physical, mental and family health of the patient. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on health-related quality of life in people with prostate cancer.

The present research was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test, post-test and follow-up with a control group. Forty patients with prostate cancer were selected by convenience sampling method from those referred to Labbafinejad and Shohada-e-Tajrish hospitals in 2019 and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (20 patients in either group). Acceptance and commitment therapy was performed in eight 90-minute sessions on the experimental group. The control group did not receive any intervention. Participants answered the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) in the pre-test, post-test and follow-up stages. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyze the data.

The results showed that acceptance and commitment therapy was effective on improving mental health, physical health and overall quality of life score of patients with prostate cancer (p<0.001). The magnitude of the effect of sources of intergroup, intragroup and interactive change for the quality of life was 73.1%, 64.4% and 11.2%, respectively.

The results of the study showed the effect of commitment-based therapy and acceptance intervention in improving the quality of health-dependent life in the experimental group. Therefore, this intervention can be used to improve the quality of life in cancer patients.