Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Psychological Well-being and Spiritual Attitude in Mothers with Autistic Children

Introduction: Having child with autism imposes a lot of psychological pressure on the family, especially mothers and has a negative effect on their psychological properties. As a result, this research aimed to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on psychological well-being and spiritual attitude in mothers with autistic children. Methods: Present research was a semi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. Research population was mothers with autistic children of Gorgan township in 2017 year. From the members of the community selected 30 people by available sampling method and randomly with lottery divided into two equal group including experimental and control groups. The experimental group 8 sessions of 90 minutes trained by acceptance and commitment method. Research tools were questionnaires of psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989) and spiritual attitude (Shahidi & Farajnia, 2012). Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance method with using SPSS-22 software. Results: The findings showed that the experimental and control groups had a significant difference in the two variables of psychological well-being and spiritual attitude. In the other words, acceptance and commitment therapy significantly increased the psychological well-being (F=57.22, P<0.001) and spiritual attitude (F=76.55, P<0.001) in mothers with autistic children. Conclusions: The results indicated the importance and effect of acceptance and commitment therapy on improving the psychological well-being and spiritual attitude in mothers with autistic children. Therefore, it is suggested that counselors and therapists use the acceptance and commitment therapy method to increase the psychological well-being and spiritual attitude.