Introduction: Autism spectrum disorder has tremendous effect on family life. Mothers of children with autism face a lot of challenges. The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment group therapy on psychological distress and negative automatic thoughts of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.
Materials and Methods: Research method of this clinical trial is pretest-posttest with control group and a one-month follow-up period. The research population included all mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder who came to exceptional centers which are under supervision of welfare. Therefore, one center was identified and 30 mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder were selected through convenience sampling based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (each group had 15 members). The participants responded to research questionnaires including Deogatis’s (2001) Brief Symptom Inventory and Hollon and Kendall's (1980) Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire before and after the intervention and one month later at follow-up stage. The test group was undergone acceptance and commitment group therapy based on Lylis et al. (2005) treatment package and no intervention took place on the control group during this period. For statistical analysis, statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22 was used.
Results:Analysis of covariance of repeated measures showed that there is significant difference between experimental group and control group in mothers’ scores of cognitive distress, frequency and belief to negative automatic thoughts (P<0.05).
Conclusion: According to the research findings, this method can be used to reduce psychological distress and negative automatic thoughts of mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.