Abstract

The study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and ‎commitment therapy (ACT) on reducing symptoms of depression and occupational ‎stress (OS) among teachers of exceptional schools. The method was applied with semi-‎experimental design (pretest - posttest) and a control group. The population was all the ‎teachers of exceptional schools of... in the second half of 2017. Twenty-four subjects ‎were selected using purposive sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and ‎control groups considering inclusion and exclusion criteria. The experimental group ‎underwent 8 sessions of ACT, and both groups were evaluated at the beginning and the ‎end of the intervention by OS questionnaires of the United Kingdom Health and Safety ‎Organization and Beck's Second Depression Inventory. Descriptive (mean and standard ‎deviation) and inferential statistics (covariance analysis for testing hypotheses) were ‎used to analyze the data. It has to be noted that the data were analyzed using SPSS-21. ‎The results showed that ACT has significant effectiveness in reduction of depression ‎symptoms and OS. It is recommended that the results of this study should be used in ‎designing therapeutic programs and counseling of exceptional school teachers‎.