Objective.— Examine whether acceptance and commitment additive therapy is effective in reducing the experience of sensory pain, disability, and affective distress because of chronic headache in a sample of outpatient Iranian females. Background.— Chronic headaches have a striking impact on sufferers in terms of pain, disability, and affective distress. Although several Acceptance and Commitment Therapy outcome studies for chronic pain have been conducted, their findings cannot be completely generalized to chronic headaches because headache‐related treatment outcome studies have a different emphasis in both provision and outcomes. Moreover, the possible role of Iranian social and cultural contexts and of gender‐consistent issues involved in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy outcomes deserve consideration. Methods.— This study used a randomized pretest–post‐test control group design. The sample was selected from consecutive female outpatients with chronic headache, attending and/or referred to a headache clinic in a governmental hospital from April 2011 to June 2011. In total, 80 female outpatients were interviewed, and after implementing inclusion/exclusion criteria, thirty females were considered eligible to participate in the study. Half (n = 15) were randomly selected to participate in the treatment group. Four participants of this group failed to complete the treatment sessions (n = 11). The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy group received the medical treatment as usual and 8 sessions of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The other half (n = 15) served as the control group that received only medical treatment as usual. The short form of McGill pain questionnaire, the migraine disability assessment scale, and the trait subscale of the state‐trait anxiety inventory were administered, which operationalized 3 dimensions of impact of chronic headache, sensory pain, disability, and emotional distress, respectively, to explore the impact of recurrent headache episodes. Pretest and post‐test measures on these 3 dimensions of impact were the primary outcome measures of this study. Analyses of covariance with the pretreatment score used as a covariate were conducted on pain intensity, degree of disability, and level of affective distress before and after therapy to assess therapeutic intervention effectiveness. Results.— Chronic tension type of headache (63%) and chronic migraine without aura (37%) were the headache types reported by the participants. Data analyses indicated the significant reduction in disability (F[1,29] = 33.72, P < .0001) and affective distress (F[1,29] = 28.27, P < .0001), but not in reported sensory aspect of pain (F[1,29] = .81, P = .574), in the treatment group in comparison with the control group. Conclusions.— The effectiveness of a brief acceptance and commitment additive therapy in the treatment of Iranian outpatient females with chronic headache represents a significant scientific finding and clinical progress, as it implies that this kind of treatment can be effectively delivered in a hosp...

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Background: Hardiness as a fundamental element of control plays a constructive role in coping with stress and moderates the effects of stress. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of group-based Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and group-based Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT)in the psychological hardiness of single mothers. Methods: The research was conducted using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with control group. Also, the statistical population included all female-headed families in the region 16 of Tehran. From women with low scores in the Ahvaz psychological hardiness questionnaire, 45 women were randomly selected and assigned into three groups: two experimental and one control group. The acceptance and commitment and cognitive-behavioral therapies were implemented in the first and second experimental groups, respectively; the control group did not receive any intervention. The experimental groups received nine training sessions. Then, the study hypotheses were tested using the 1-way analysis of covariance. Results: Both interventions effectively increased the psychological hardiness in the single mothers, but no significant difference was found between the two intervention groups (P=0.38). Conclusion: According to the results, it is possible to increase the psychological hardiness of the single mothers by group-based acceptance and commitment therapy and group-based cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Although emotions are the evolutionary mechanism, it has been attempted to control and direct these evolutionary programs. One of the ways to control emotions is to promote emotional self-efficacy. The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the effectiveness of CBT and ACT on emotional self-efficacy of the family-headed women. For this purpose, 200 women were selected from among female-headed families under the auspices of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee (IKRC) of Tehran. They were tested by emotional self-efficacy questionnaire. The control group did not receive any intervention. The experimental groups went through nine training sessions, respectively, on the CBT and ACT. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS-23 software and one-way covariance analysis. Results showed that both of the approaches were effective in the dependent variable, but there was no significant difference between them. Based on the results of the research, emotional self-efficacy of the family headed women can be increased by group-based CBT and ACT approaches.

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