The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on sleep quality and quality of life of patients with cardiovascular problems

People with cardiovascular problems have poor sleep quality and quality of life. These problems exacerbate the process of their disease.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment-based therapy on improving quality of life and sleep quality of cardiovascular patients.

This research has been executed in context of a clinical trial plan with pre-test, post-test and two-month and six-month follow up period. Among the patients with cardiovascular disease of Kermanshah city who had referred in hospitals of this city in year 2020-2021, 40 people were purposefully selected and were randomly assigned to experimental (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. Tools of this research included: Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) and The Short form health survey (SF-36). The experimental group received eight sessions of 90-minute acceptance and commitment therapy. SPSS-24 software and repeated measures analysis of variance were used to analyze the data.

The results of this research indicated that acceptance and commitment therapy leads to a significant improvement in sleep quality and quality of life in the experimental group (P<0.01). The effect size for quality of life and quality of sleep were 0.63 and 0.62, respectively (P<0.01).

The findings of this study showed that acceptance and commitment therapy leads to improved quality of life and quality of sleep in patients with cardiovascular problems. Based on these findings, this treatment can be used to improve sleep quality and quality of life problems that play an exacerbating role in the process of disease in patients with cardiovascular problems.