The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on inner happiness and quality of life of women with breast cancer

Cancer is known as one of the most important health problems around the world, and if its prevalence increases in this way, according to the United Nations estimate, one out of every five people will definitely get one of the forms of cancer. The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of psychotherapy based on acceptance and commitment on the inner happiness and quality of life of women with breast cancer.

The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and follow-up with the control group. The statistical population included all young women 20 to 45 years old with breast cancer who received a definite diagnosis of breast cancer according to clinical and laboratory examinations by a specialist. Among them, 30 people were selected by available sampling method and randomly replaced in two experimental groups (psychotherapy based on acceptance and commitment) and control (15 people in each group). Then the experimental group was treated in 10 sessions of 90 minutes (one session per week) with psychotherapy methods based on acceptance and commitment based on the protocol of Hayes et al. (2004) and the waiting list group was not subjected to any intervention until the end of the follow-up. The data were collected with the help of Argyle's (2001) inner happiness questionnaires, quality of life questionnaire (SF-36) and were analyzed through analysis of variance with repeated measures and using SPSS-22 software.

The results of the research showed that psychotherapy based on acceptance and commitment is effective on the inner happiness (P<0.001) and quality of life (P<0.001) of women with breast cancer.

As a result, health professionals can use psychotherapy based on acceptance and commitment along with other treatment methods to improve the inner happiness and quality of life of vulnerable groups, including breast cancer patients.