It’s ironic that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, pronounced as one word rather than as separate letters) finds itself in the vanguard of psychotherapy because many of the techniques it relies on are thousands of years old. Mindfulness training, for example, is a key component of ACT, and this draws from Buddhist practices that have endured for over two thousand five hundred years.

ACT blends Eastern and Western approaches to reducing
suffering by approaching life with all its pain and potential. It begins with developing nonjudgmental acceptance of thoughts and impulses, and then directs you to understand what you truly value and how you can commit yourself to activities and goals reflecting your values. In this way, ACT blends a Buddhist sense of harmony with the world with the Western ethos of self-direction.

Unlike its antecedent, cognitive behavioral therapy, ACT does not seek to change negative or self-defeating thoughts. Rather, its goal is acceptance without judgment of those thoughts in combination with a clear and workable plan for constructive action, which allows you to build a life driven by your values and aspirations rather than mental ephemera. New Harbinger’s most recent title to make use of ACT is The Anorexia Workbook.

New Harbinger will release Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders Written by noted psychologists Georg Eifert and John Forsyth, this book for professionals develops practical treatment protocols based on ACT that therapists can use to treat their clients with general anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other anxiety disorders.

In November 2005, New Harbinger will publish Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life by Steven Hayes, one of the founding theorists of ACT. This workbook will adapt the principles of ACT into a comprehensive self-care program readers can use to address a range of problems such as anxiety, depression, and panic.

As ever more psychologists explore this new direction in psychotherapy, look for more New Harbinger titles that apply ACT principles to many of today’s most pressing mental health challenges.

A Few Research Findings on ACT

A 2000 study compared the effects of ACT on workplace stress management to those of other therapies. The study randomly assigned participants, who were evenly divided between male and female, to three groups. One received ACT. Another received a behaviorally oriented Innovation Promotion Program (IPP) that encouraged subjects to identify and change stressful events in their workplace. A third group was assigned to a wait-list control. Those who received ACT showed a significant improvement in stress levels and psychological health over those who underwent IPP or who were in the control group. These improvements were observed at post-treatment and at a three-month follow-up (Bond and Bunce).

A 2002 study focused on polysubstance-abusing opiate-addicted subjects who were maintained on methadone. Participants were randomly assigned to stay on methadone maintenance, or to add sixteen weeks of individual and group ACT, or Intensive Twelve-Step Facilitation (ITSF) components. At the six-month follow-up mark, participants in the ACT group demonstrated a greater decrease in opiate use than those who received ITSF (Hayes, et al.).

Another 2002 study compared the effect of ACT on chronic smokers who were trying to give-up cigarette smoking to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Quit rates were equivalent at the immediate post-treatment stage, but a one-year follow-up showed that those who received ACT had greater rates of smoking cessation than those who had used NRT (Gifford).