The Effect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Sleep Quality and Blood Pressure of Elderly with Insomnia

This study was conducted with the aim of determine the effect of acceptance and commitment therapy on sleep quality and blood pressure of elderly with insomnia.

The present study was a quasi-experimental with pre-test, post-test and two-month follow-up with a control group. The study population was the elderly with insomnia at the Shiraz Visual Elderly Day Care Center in 2019, from which 40 people were selected by simple random sampling according to the inclusion criteria and randomly replaced in two equal groups. The experimental group received 8 sessions of 90 minutes (two sessions per week) of acceptance and commitment and the control group did not receive training. Data were collected using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (Boise et al. 1989) and blood pressure monitor and analyzed by chi-square, repeated measures variance analysis and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS-23 software version 23.

The results showed that the experimental and control groups did not differ significantly in terms of gender, education and marriage (P>0.05). Also, acceptance and commitment treatment improved sleep quality and systolic blood pressure in the elderly with insomnia (P<0.05), but had no significant effect on their diastolic blood pressure (P>0.05) and the results were maintained in the follow-up phase.

According to the results, planning is necessary to use the acceptance and commitment therapy method in the field of elderly to improve sleep quality and systolic blood pressure. Therefore, health professionals and therapists can use acceptance and commitment therapy along with other therapies methods to improve sleep quality and systolic blood pressure