Determining the Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Interpersonal Forgiveness and Distress Tolerance of Female Victims of Domestic Violence

Family plays a key role in raising children and transmitting culture, customs, and beliefs to future generations. Domestic violence results in disorders which prevent this social institution from playing its expected role. One sort of domestic violence is violence against women. Interpersonal forgiveness plays a significant role in creating and maintaining mental health and peace in the family. Forgiveness means releasing the psychological and emotional processes within the injured person. Distress tolerance is defined as the self–reported ability of a person to experience and tolerate negative emotional states or the behavioral ability to continue goal–oriented behavior when experiencing emotional distress. One of the psychological treatments related to this social problem is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Considering the importance of interpersonal forgiveness and tolerance of distress in women affected by domestic violence, the present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of ACT on interpersonal forgiveness and distress tolerance of female victims of domestic violence.

The method of this study was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The statistical population included all female victim of domestic violence living in Sari City, Iran, who were referred to Social Emergency from December 23, 2019, to June 30, 2020. Of whom, 30 females were select by purposive sampling method. They were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups (15 persons for each group). The inclusion criteria were obtaining a lower score on the Interpersonal Forgiveness Scale (Ehteshamzadeh et al., 2011) (scores less than 50) and Distress Tolerance Scale (Simons & Gaher, 2005) (scores less than 40), aged 20 to 40 years, minimum education diploma, not taking psychoactive drugs during the last quarter, lacking an incurable disease, obtaining informed consent, and not undergoing other psychological treatment at the same time. The exclusion criteria were absenteeism in two consecutive sessions and suffering from neurological and mental diseases, including psychosis during the treatment sessions. The required data were obtained using the Interpersonal Forgiveness Scale (Ehteshamzadeh et al., 2011) and Distress Tolerance Scale (Simons & Gaher, 2005). Acceptance and commitment therapy was implemented in eight 90–minute sessions once a week based on the training package provided by Hayes et al. (2006). No intervention was provided for the control group. The research data were analyzed in SPSS version 22 software. In this software, descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used for data analysis. The significance level of all tests was considered 0.05.

The results showed that, by controlling the effect of the pretest, there were significant differences in the variables of interpersonal forgiveness (p<0.001) and distress tolerance (p<0.001) in the posttest between the women abused by domestic violence in the experimental group and the control group. The effects of the intervention on the changes in the variables of distress tolerance and interpersonal forgiveness were 0.414 and 0.337, respectively.

Considering the effectiveness of ACT on increasing interpersonal forgiveness and tolerance of distress in women exposed to domestic violence, this treatment can be used in counseling and psychological centers to improve the psychological problems of women abused by domestic violence.