Comparing the Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Pain Complaint Behavior and Pain Self-efficacy in Patients with Chronic Back Pain in Tehran

Chronic back pain is among the most common types of chronic pains. This research was conducted to compare the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on pain complaint behavior and pain self-efficacy in patients with chronic back pain. The current research is a pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design with a control group that lasted from February 2019 to March 2020. The statistical population consisted of patients with chronic back pain referring to the specialty department of Al-Zahra Hakimieh Clinic in Tehran (Iran). The participants included 45 people selected by purposive and accessible sampling method and randomly assigned to three groups (15 people in each group). The first experimental group received CBT, the second experimental group received ACT, and the control group did not receive any intervention. Required data were collected using demographic information, pain complaint behavior, and pain self-efficacy questionnaires. Research hypotheses were examined using univariate covariance analysis. According to the results, 45 patients (33 men and 12 women) with an average age of 41.18 participated in this research. The F statistic obtained from univariate covariance analysis was significant for all dependent variables (P < 0.001). The effectiveness of CBT and ACT interventions on pain complaint behavior and pain self-efficacy was compared using Bonferroni’s post hoc test. The results indicated no significant difference between the effectiveness of CBT and ACT on pain complaint behavior and pain self-efficacy in both post-test and follow-up phases (P > 0.05). Therefore, the effectiveness of both interventions on the pain complaint behavior and pain self-efficacy was the same. Overall, although the findings support the effectiveness of CBT and ACT in reducing the pain complaint behavior and increasing pain self-sufficiency in patients with chronic back pain, there was no significant difference between them in the post-test and the follow-up. Accordingly, this study recommends using CBT and ACT to reduce pain complaint behavior and increase pain self-sufficiency among chronic patients.