The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies and Cognitive Flexibility in Gastrointestinal Patients

The gastrointestinal tract, as one of the most important organs of the body, has its own diseases that involved many people. Therefore, the present study seeks to investigate the effectiveness acceptance and commitment therapy based on cognitive-emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility among gastrointestinal patients.

The research method was quasi-experimental with pretest-posttest design with control group was unbalanced and the statistical population of this study was all gastrointestinal patients in Sari who referred to Imam Khomeini Hospital in 2020 and its sample included 30 people (15 people for the experimental group and 15 people for the control group), who were selected using the available sampling method. Then, the members of the experimental group were treated for 8 sessions based on acceptance and commitment and the control group did not receive any treatment. Research instruments included the Cognitive-Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (Garnowski et al, 2001) and Cognitive Flexibility (Dena and Venedrwal, 2010). And the statistical method of this research was multivariate analysis of covariance.

The results of multivariable covariance analysis showed that acceptance and commitment therapy was effective on cognitive-emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility and significantly improved cognitive-emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility in gastrointestinal patients.

According to the research findings, acceptance and commitment therapy can be used as an effective method to promote cognitive-emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility in gastrointestinal patients.