The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on distress tolerance, rumination and experiential avoidance in adolescents with depression

Depression is one of the most common psychological disorders that many psychotherapists have paid special attention to, and its treatment is one of the most challenging clinical issues. Therefore, this research was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on distress tolerance, rumination and experiential avoidance in depressed adolescents. The research was semi-experimental with pre-test, post-test and control group. All the female students of the first secondary school in the 18th district of Tehran formed the statistical population of this study. 30 people were selected through available sampling and were placed in the experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups, and the research tools included depression questionnaire-short form, distress tolerance questionnaire, rumination questionnaire and acceptance questionnaire and They completed the operation. The data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and multivariate covariance analysis. The results showed that there was a significant change in distress tolerance between the experimental and control groups (F=44.56, P=0.004 and η=0.60). and rumination (F = 9.32, P = 0.013 and η = 0.57) from pre-test to post-test and as a result of the intervention with the method of acceptance and commitment, distress tolerance and rumination in the experimental group improved (P<0.05). Also, between the subjects of the two groups, there is a significant change in the experiential avoidance score from the pre-test to the post-test, and due to the intervention, the experiential avoidance of the girls in the experimental group has decreased (F=15.26, P=0.009 and η = 0.61). According to the results of the research, the treatment based on acceptance and commitment can be used as a key intervention in the field of prevention of emotional and cognitive damage in teenagers.