The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on tolerance failure and health anxiety in nursing and midwifery students with health anxiety

Nursing and midwifery staff and students of this field are exposed to many stresses due to their educational and occupational nature, including long and continuous communication with sick and dying patients, extraordinary responsibility, and personal requests from He pointed out the patient and the people around him. The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on failure tolerance and health anxiety in nursing and midwifery students suffering from health anxiety. 

It is a semi-experimental research design with a pre-test-post-test design and a three-month follow-up with the control group. The statistical population included all nursing and midwifery students suffering from health anxiety in the free universities of Gilan branch in 2021. Among these, 30 people were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly replaced in the experimental group (treatment based on acceptance and commitment) and control (15 people in each group). Mindfulness-based therapeutic schema was performed in 10 90-minute sessions based on Yang et al.'s (2003) educational package in the experimental group. Data were collected using failure tolerance questionnaire (Harnigton, 2005), health anxiety questionnaire (Saluskis and Warwick, 2002). The data was analyzed using SPSS-22 software and through the analysis of variance test with repeated measurements.

The results of the research showed that acceptance and commitment therapy is effective in tolerating failure (P<0.001) and health anxiety (P<0.001) in nursing and midwifery students suffering from health anxiety.

Considering the role of beliefs and thoughts in health anxiety, it is suggested that therapists consider treatment based on acceptance and commitment therapy in reducing the symptoms of tolerance failure and health anxiety.