A Single-Session of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Health-Related Behavior Change: Protocol Description and Initial Case Examples

Many who might benefit from behavioral health services do not receive them. In order to reach people at the scale that is needed to impact population health requires the development and testing of brief interventions. A reasonable place to begin is streamlining existing evidence-based interventions. The current paper describes a 1-session (60 min) acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) protocol for health-related behaviors (i.e., tobacco use, physical activity, alcohol consumption, nutrition, and sleep) identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as key for chronic disease prevention. After describing the structure of the protocol, its application is illustrated through the presentation of 4 cases (3 successes and 1 failure) who received the intervention as part of an outcome study. The case examples demonstrate that the ACT protocol might provide a useful organizational structure for brief applications thereby providing a model of delivery that could be relatively broad in its reach.