Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Treatment Adherence in People with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Introduction: The present study was conducted with the aim of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on treatment adherence in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental design with an experimental group and a control group with pre-test, post-test and two-month follow-up. This study was conducted in 2019 in Tehran in the statistical population of people with NAFLD diagnosis. In this study, 30 individuals with NAFLD were purposefully selected and they were randomly assigned to two groups and received a pre-test. Then, the experimental group underwent group intervention of acceptance and commitment therapy during two months of ten sessions while the control group had received the typical routine interventions from medical centers. The Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (Moriski et al., 2008) was conducted in the all of three stages of measurement. In order to analyze the data, repeated measures analysis of variance test with SPSS-16 software was used. Results: The trend of changes in the intervention group compared to the control group in the measurement stages in the treatment adherence to the treatment (F= 4.243, P=0.03) was significantly different (P <0.05) and about 15% of the differences observed in this variable is due to group membership (intervention). To compare these changes over time, Benfronchr('39')s subtest was used. The difference between pre-test with post-test and follow-up were only significant in the intervention group (P <0.05). Conclusion: Acceptance and commitment-based therapy increases treatment adherence. Therefore, it is suggested that this method be used to increase treatment adherence in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver.