Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on Suicidal Thoughts, Self‐concealment and Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Women with Suicidal Thoughts

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on suicidal thoughts, self‐concealment, and cognitive emotion regulation in women with suicidal thoughts. This research was done experimentally and through designing pre-test and post-test and using a control group. The statistical population included all women with suicidal thoughts who referred to comprehensive health centers in Ardabil city in 2019. The research sample of the study was 40 women in this population who were selected by convenience sampling method and randomly replaced into the experimental and control group.  For data collection, we used the suicidal thoughts scale (Beck & Steer, 1991), the self‐concealment scale (Larson & Chastain, 1990), and the short form of cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (Garnefski & Kraaij, 2006). Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). The results indicated that acceptance and commitment therapy had a significant effect on reducing self‐concealment and suicidal thoughts and increasing cognitive emotion regulation in women with suicidal thoughts (P<0.001). These findings indicate that acceptance and commitment therapy may be effective in reducing suicidal thoughts by improving the regulation and expression of emotions.