The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on AnxiousThoughts and Fear of Negative Evaluation of Depressed Women

Women with depression have major problems with psychological health. One of the intervention methods for reducing psychological issues is acceptance and commitment therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment-based therapy on anxious thoughts and fear of negative evaluation of depressed women. The present study was applied and quasi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. Its statistical population consisted of depressed women referred to psychiatric clinics in Sari in 1398. The samples were 30 people from the mentioned community selected using the available sampling method. They were assigned to acceptance and commitment treatment (15 people) and control (15 people) groups by a simple random method to answer the Anxious Thought Questionnaire (Wells, 1994), Fear of Negative Evaluation Questionnaire (Watson & Friend, (1969), and Depression Inventory (Beck, 1961). The experimental group was trained for 10 sessions once a week for 60 minutes, and the control group did not receive any intervention. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (analysis of covariance) in SPSS-24 software. The results showed that commitment and acceptance therapy reduced negative, anxious thoughts and fear of evaluation (p<0.001). Eta squared showed the effect of this treatment on anxiety to be 0.38 and fear of negative to be 0.47. Based on the findings, acceptance and commitment therapy is recommended as an effective and complementary psychological intervention in depressed women to reduce anxious thoughts and fear of negative evaluation.