The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment-Based Treatment (ACT) on Improving Emotion Regulation Strategy for People with Gastrointestinal and Skin Disorders

People with gastrointestinal and skin disorders are prone to severe psychological and physical damage—one of these potential damages is cognitive and emotion regulation problems. Cognitive emotion regulation refers to people's cognitive methods to solve unpleasant emotional experiences and increase or decrease excitement. One of the most critical injuries for any human being can be problems in the cognitive regulation of their emotions. Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in improving the emotion regulation strategy of people with gastrointestinal and skin disorders.

The present study was a quasi–experimental study in which a pre–test and post–test research design with a control group were used. The study's statistical population included all patients with skin and hair disorders and gastrointestinal disorders of psychosomatic origin who were referred to internal medicine and dermatology clinics and hospitals in Bukan from 2018–to 2019. 30 People were selected by a purposive sampling method. Criteria for entering the study included expressing satisfaction and ability to participate in training sessions, having gastrointestinal and skin disorders under the treating physician's approval, clinical documents and tests in the file, and criteria for leaving the study were unwillingness to continue cooperation and absence. Furthermore, they were randomly assigned to two groups of 15 people, including an experimental group and a control group. (ACT) program based on Hayes (2002) approach was performed on the experimental group for eight sessions of 1.5 hours per month. Two sessions were held each week, and the control group did not receive any intervention. In the present study, a univariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data, and the research findings were analyzed using SPSS 23 software at a significance level of 0.05. In this study, descriptive statistical methods such as mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics such as the Shapiro–Wilkes test, Levin test, and analysis of covariance were used.

Descriptive findings indicate the age of the subjects in the experimental group with a mean and standard deviation of 37.06 and 3.91, which includes 6 (40%) females and 9 (60%) males, and in the control group with a mean and standard deviation 38.60 and 2.69, which included 5 (33%33) females and 10 (66%66) males. Our groups were not significantly different in terms of age. Based on the results of the univariate analysis of covariance and due to the lower average scores of the experimental group in the post–test of cognitive emotion regulation scores, our ACT–based training program significantly improved the cognitive emotion regulation strategy of people with anxiety (p<0.001). It promoted the strategy of emotional and cognitive regulation of these people.

Overall, the results showed the effectiveness of the (ACT) in improving the emotion regulation strategy of people with gastrointestinal and skin disorders. Therefore this treatment can be used to reduce problems in emotion regulation, and improvement is recommended for its upgrade.