The Efficacy of ACT on Anxiety and Depression in Infertile Women Who Undergoing in Virto Fertilization (IVF)

Act is one of the third generation therapies in which there is trying to alter the one ̓s relationship with his or her thoughts and feelings instead of changing the cognitions. The aim of this research is to evaluate the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on reducing depression and anxiety in infertile women who undergoing In vitro fertilization (IVF). ACT has not used for reducing anxiety and depression in pregnant women before. In this study Quasi-experimental pretest-posttest and follow up with control group was used. Among women who had primary or secondary infertility, undergoing IVF, and were at 14-22 weeks gestational age, available sampling was conducted. 35 women with above feature, assigned to experiment (17) and control (18) groups randomly. SCID and BDI-II and BAI were used for assessing depression and anxiety; before the intervention and after it; and all of them repeated one month after ending the intervention. The experimental group participated in 8sessions of ACT, which lasted 90 minutes weekly; while control group didn't undergo any training. To examine the hypothesis, mixed analysis of variance between - the subjects (SPANOVA) was used. Analysis of mixed variance of the effects between-groups for depression and anxiety showed the significant level was less than 0/05. Thus with 95% reliability, it can be resulted that Act was effective for decreasing of depression and anxiety in experimental group. The results indicated by creating psychological flexibility, ACT decreased depression and anxiety in pregnant women who undergoing IVF significantly. This reduction remained one month after ending of intervention.

It seems acceptance and commitment therapy as a complementary treatment, in addition to medical treatments for infertility, improves the health of the mother and fetus during pregnancy and can have an important role.