Comparison of the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with using Rumi stories and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Distress Tolerance of Mothers of Children with Cerebral Palsy

Researchers are interested in facilitating mechanisms in therapeutic interventions, including cultural mechanisms, therefore this study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy using Mowlana's parables and anecdotes and acceptance and commitment therapy in distress tolerance in mothers of children with cerebral palsy.

Methods and Materials: 

This applied study was conducted using a mixed method (using qualitative-quantitative data). The quantitative part of the research consisted of comparative content analysis and the quantitative phase consisted of a quasi-experiment with pretest-posttest design using intervention and control groups. Participants consisted of 48 mothers of children with cerebral palsy who were selected using purposeful sampling and were randomly allocated to two intervention and one control groups. To collect data, the Distress Tolerance Scale (Simmons and Gaher, 2005) were used. Data were analyzed in SPSS 23 using the repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni's post-hoc test.

The results showed that the difference in the effect of the two treatment methods on the components of tolerance (p=0.020), evaluation (p=0.037) and, accordingly, the total distress tolerance score (p=0.016) is significant, so that the treatment based on acceptance and commitment has increased the average scores of the two components of tolerance and evaluation more in addition to the total score of distress tolerance compared to cognitive behavioral therapy using Rumi's parables and anecdotes.

It can be concluded that the treatment based on acceptance and commitment is a more effective method to increase distress tolerance in mothers of children with cerebral palsy compared to cognitive behavioral therapy using Rumi's parables and anecdotes.