The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment-Based Therapy on Psychological Flexibility and Quality of Life of Divorced Women

Divorce is the most important cause of the collapse and disintegration of the structure of the most fundamental part of society, the family, which can be the source of many social ills. The negative effects of divorce will stay with the person for a long time. Due to the increase in divorce rates in recent years, it seems necessary to help each family member after divorce. Because the experience of divorce affects the compatibility of couples and their children in all psychological, physical, social, and emotional dimensions and reduces the performance and inefficiency of family members, all of these issues can affect women's quality of life. Another important indicator of mental health has psychological flexibility, which increases the feeling of intimacy and better interaction in couples. There are several interventions to increase divorced women's psychological flexibility and quality of life. Acceptance and commitment therapy is among the most symptom–modifying interventions. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on divorced women's psychological flexibility and quality of life.

The present study was semi-experimental in terms of methodology and one of the pre-tests and post-test designs with a control group. The statistical population consisted of all divorced women under the auspices of the Welfare Center of District 18 of Tehran in 2020. The statistical sample consisted of 40 women eligible to participate in the study and was randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (20 people in each group). Inclusion criteria for divorced women in this study were 1—not using other psychological and psychotherapy services while participating in the study; 2—no psychiatric disorders and no use of psychiatric drugs; 3—Not being under the advice of another group during the research. Criteria for excluding divorced women from the present study included dissatisfaction with continuing to participate, absence from more than two training sessions, and inability to schedule training sessions. The Psychological Flexibility Inventory (Dennis and Vanderwall, 2010) and The World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL–BREF) (World Health Organization, 1996) were used to collect data. Experimental group participants received 12 sessions of acceptance and commitment therapy (Foreman and Herbert, 2008). No intervention was provided for the control group. The research data analysis did in two parts: descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (multivariate analysis of covariance) with the help of SPSS statistical analysis software version 22. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05.

The results of the analysis of covariance showed that after eliminating the effect of pretest, acceptance and commitment therapy is effective in increasing psychological flexibility (p<0.001) and increasing the quality of life of divorced women (p<0.001). In other words, according to Eta squared, the increase in the mean of each of the variables of psychological flexibility and quality of life was 52% and 36%, respectively, affected by the intervention with acceptance and commitment therapy.

Based on the present study results, it is concluded that acceptance and commitment therapy effectively increases psychological flexibility and improves the quality of life of divorced women. So, this therapeutic intervention can be used to improve the Psychological flexibility and quality of life of divorced women.