The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on the Illness Perception in Dialysis Patients

One of the proposed psychological treatments in hemodialysis patients is acceptance and commitment therapy. The acceptance and commitment therapy focuses on psychological flexibility and this occurs when a person consciously accepts his or her thoughts and feelings and shows a behavior consistent with his or her personal values. As chronic kidney failure causes many psychological problems for patients, which can affect their various aspects of life and significantly reduce their quality of life and as acceptance and commitment therapy has provided promising results in helping patients with severe and chronic conditions to cope with their psychological, physical, social, family and economic problems and given the important role of the variable of illness perception in this regard, the present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of acceptance and commitment therapy on illness perception of patients. The statistical population of this study included hemodialysis patients in the dialysis ward of Bouali Marivan Hospital from 22-11-2018 to 22/11/2012. The number of subjects in each of the experimental and control groups was 15. The experimental group received acceptance and commitment therapy at 8 sessions and the control group received no therapy. The data were collected using Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised (IPQ-R). Data were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive statistics and covariance analysis. The results of the study showed that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) was effective on illness perception, consequences of the illness perception, illness personal control perception, illness treatment control perception, concern and emotional responses perception in dialysis patients. However, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) did not affect the illness timeline perception, identity of the illness perception and the illness recognition in dialysis patients.