Effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on depression, rumination and self – efficacy of depressed female high school students

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment based therapy on rumination, depression and self-efficacy of high school girls in Isfahan. The research method was quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test with control group. Thirty female students were randomly selected from a group of female high school students in Khomeini Shahr by screening method and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (15 in each group). Subjects in each group answered adolescent depression questionnaires (Kutcher, 2002), rumination answers (Yousefi, 2009) and self-efficacy (Sherrer, 2002) before, after and three months after the intervention. Experimental group 10 sessions, treatment based on acceptance and commitment (Hayes & Strosahl, 2010) but no intervention was performed in the control group. The results of multivariate analysis of covariance showed that the mean scores of depression and rumination of students after treatment decreased in the post-test and follow-up phase and their self-efficacy increased. According to the results of this study, acceptance and commitment-based therapy significantly reduced rumination and depression in the experimental group compared to the control group (P<0.001) and increased the self-efficacy of the experimental group compeared to the control group (P<0.001).