Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Men under Methadone Treatment

Introduction: Today, third wave therapy in psychotherapy puts special emphasis on the individuals’ awareness as well as their emotional and cognitive acceptance rather than challenging the cognitions. Therfore, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on cognitive emotion regulation in the addicted men under Methadone treatment. Method: The study population consisted of all the addicted men under Methadone treatment referring to an addiction treatment clinic in Isfahan in 2014-2015, out of which 24 addicted men were selected via convenience sampling method, and then were appointed randomly into two experimental and control groups (n= 12). Both groups filled Cognition Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. The therapeutic interventions based on aacceptance and commitment therapy were held for the experimental group for 8 sessions of one hour once a week. Ultimately, the collected data were analyzed applying SPSS software via ANCOVA method . Result: The findings of the present study demonstrated a significant positive impact of acceptance and commitment therapy on reduction of self blame, rumination, catastrophizing as well as blaming others. Moreover, a significant increase was observed in regard with the acceptance, positive refocus, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal and positive perspective. Conclusion: It was concluded that acceptance and commitment therapy seems to be beneficial to enhancing the emotion regulation of addicted men under Methadone treatment, which can be related to training the referrents to accept their thoughts and conditions.