Comparison of the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on reduction of anxiety symptoms in patients with Generalized anxiety disorder during the outbreak of Covid-19

Recent research has shown the prevalence of the Covid-19 epidemic in this regard The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on reduction anxiety symptoms in patients with Generalized anxiety disorder in Dezful during the outbreak of Covid-19.

The research was a pilot study with a pretest-post-test-follow-up with control group. The statistical population of this study was the All patients with generalized anxiety disorder referring to Dezful counseling centers 30 people were selected through targeted sampling and randomly assigned to two groups of experimental and control group. In all three groups, patients' anxiety disorder was assessed through the questionnaire of General Anxiety (GAD-7). The first group received cognitive-behavioral therapy in 8 sessions 60 minutes, and the second group in 8 sessions 60 minutes acceptance and commitment therapy, but the third group did not receive training. Then, the anxiety test was re-evaluated in all three groups. Given that the assumptions of covariance analysis were not met data were analyzed using one-way variance analysis and SPSS software.

The findings of the study showed that cognitive-behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy could reduce the symptoms of anxiety in comparison with the control group (p <0.001) However, the difference between the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy on reduce the symptoms of anxiety was not significant (p> 0.05).

It seems that both therapeutic approaches can be effective in treating the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.