Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy on depression, anxiety, aggression, and quality of life in dialysis patients. The study was a quasi-experimental with pre-test, post-test, and control group design. The sample consisted of 30 dialysis patients who were selected using random sampling method from the patients referring to the hospital. They were randomly assigned to two groups of control and experiment (15 individuals for each group). All patients were divided into three stages: pre-test, post-test, and two-month follow up, and all patients completed Depression (Beck et al., 2000), anxiety (Beck et al., 1990), aggression (Basi & Perry, 1992) and quality of life (World Health Organization, 1989) questionnaires. The experimental group received acceptance and commitment therapy in eight sessions of 90-minutes each. The results using repeated measurements analysis showed that acceptance and commitment therapy had a significant effect on the decrease of depression, anxiety and aggression and improved quality of life in patients in both post-test and follow-up stages (P <0.05). The effect coefficients on the variables were 0.0, 134.263, 173, and 0.2004respectively. It was concluded that acceptance and commitment therapy can be used to reduce depression, anxiety, and aggression, as well as to improve the quality of life of dialysis patients.