Comparison of the Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment –Based Therapy and Guided Mental Imaging on Emotional Regulation of Cardiac Disease Patients Referring to the Cardiac Rehabilitation Department

Background: The present study aimed to compare the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Guided Imagery (GI) on Emotional Regulation (ER) in patients with cardiovascular diseases referred to the cardiac rehabilitation department. Materials and Methods: This study was an experimental study with a pretest-posttest design, a 45-day follow-up. Using the purposive sampling method, 45 patients with cardiovascular diseases referring to the cardiac rehabilitation ward of Imam Reza (AS) Hospital in Mashhad City, Iran, from March to August 2017 were selected and placed in three groups. The intervention groups received ACT and GI programs. The patients completed the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire in the three stages of pretest, posttest, and follow-up. Results: The obtained data indicated a significant difference between the ACT and GI groups concerning positive and negative ER. The analysis of variance data also suggested the effectiveness of both interventions in the studied subjects (P<0.001). Besides, the effectiveness of ACT was significantly greater than that of GI in increasing positive and negative ER among the studied patients. Conclusion: The present study findings revealed that experiential avoidance, which is one of the main cores of psychological inflexibility in ACT, is significantly and negatively correlated with adaptive ER strategies. One of the main goals of ACT is to reduce avoidance. Thus, the ACT can improve adaptive ER strategies. Accordingly, ACT is more effective in increasing positive ER strategies in patients with cardiovascular diseases.v