Effect of acceptance and commitment group therapy on benefit finding and adherence to treatment in breast cancer patients and survivors: A randomized clinical trial study

The positive experience of life changes and the following treatment play a key role in adapting and improving breast cancer. It seems that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) helps this issue via facilitating acceptance and clarification of values. Therefore, the current study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of ACT on the benefit and adherence to treatment in breast cancer patients and survivors.

The current study's design was a clinical trial including pretest-posttest and with the control group. It's performed on 52 patients and breast cancer survivors referred to the cancer patients association in Gorgan during 2020. Participants were purposefully selected and randomly divided into two experimental groups (patients and survivors) and two control groups (patients and survivors). The experimental groups underwent ACT for eight consecutive sessions (one 90-minute session per week), but the control groups did not receive any intervention. Data were obtained via benefit finding scale and adherence to treatment questionnaire and analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance.

The results showed a significant difference between the experimental groups of patients, survivors, and control groups in variables of benefit finding and adherence to treatment' components (P<0.05).

According to the study results, it's recommended to use ACT to improve the benefit finding and adherence to treatment in breast cancer of patients and survivors.