Iranian Journal of Rehabilitation Research in Nursing

Introduction: In recent years, road accidents have had incremental trend which resulted in physical, financial and psychological outcomes. One of the major psychological problems of road accidents is the emergence of post-traumatic stress disorder in people. Therefore the present study was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy in treating adolescents suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in road accident survivors in the province of Isfahan. Methods: The method of the current study was semi-experimental, with pretest-posttest one-group design due to the manner of available sampling. The statistical population of the study included individuals who had road accidents and the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder in 2012-13. In order to conduct the study 10 adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder were selected through available sampling. So the entering criterion to the study was having post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from road accidents and the age of adolescence and exiting criterion was having post-traumatic stress disorder and not being adolescent. The applied instruments were the scale of traumatic event and the scale of post-traumatic stress syndrome. The achieved data were analyzed via ANOVA with repeated measurements by SPSS 20 software. Results: The results showed that there is a significant difference between groups in the research variables (p<0/001). The results of univariable tests indicated that the observed difference in MANOVA was in the scales of anxiety, depression, anger and post-traumatic stress (p<0/01) while there was not observed any significant difference in the analysis variable (p>0/05). Conclusion: Acceptance and commitment therapy helps the adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder to be able to contact with the present moment and now and here-and-now experience more and avoid living in the past which is concomitant with mental rumination of traumatic memories.