Talk:Acceptance and commitment therapy

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Advert?

This line seems a *little* bit too much like an advertisement:

ACT is considered an empirical psychotherapy, its practitioners and researchers are dedicated to the development of science and empirical evaluation of its effects

-Sayfadeen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sayfadeen (talk • contribs) 22:49, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

WHS. Added POV tag. Rich Farmbrough, 09:53 6 October 2006 (GMT).

I think the first part is not an advert, but I did soften it. The last part is actually true (go to contextualpsychology.org and decide for yourself), but it is unnecessary so I removed it.

- Steve Hayes — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steven C. Hayes (talk • contribs) 05:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect Dr Hayes, this article is predicated and substantialy referenced through your own work rather than independently. In the introduction, the phrase "empirically based" implies that ACT is "derived from or provable through evidence and/or experiment". This claim is not substantiated in the article. Furthermore, the underpinning contexts such as Relational Frame Theory are also yours. I have therefore tagged the article as representating a conflict of interest rather than the more aggressive tage of it being an advertisement. I believe that the addition of balancing and contextualising text is required together with relevant citations in prder to remove this.

LookingGlass (talk) 16:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Dr Hayes,I think the reason take issue with the previously mentioned statements, and they may correct me if I'm wrong, is not so much that you are making statements supporting your own work, but that you are not providing independent sources to verify that information. To assert within the scope of Wikipedia's goals that something is empirical, for example, one must provide a citation to a clinical study which concludes this very thing. Please see Wikipedia's citation guidelines for more info on what is a citable source: Wikipedia:Citing_sources —Preceding unsigned comment added by KrisWood (talk • contribs) 22:56, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Untitled

I find it curious that the historical roots of ACT to be found in Buddhist philosophy and literature are not acknowledged or explored in the discussions.

Larry Agriesti — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.102.161.75 (talk) 23:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I found it interesting, given the authors have gone a long way to acknowledge links with other approaches, that no mention is made of hypnosis in Acceptance & Committment Therapy, Hayes,Strosahl,Wilson, no doubt others have already commented on the use of hypnotic induction throughout, for instance page 193, observer exercise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.153.203 (talk) 19:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Tone

Thread retitled from "Tone: too much fluff".

This article contains way too much unexplained jargon and reads like a bunch of fluff. Let's pare down to empirically supportable statements and completely get rid of trade terms that don't help the audience understand the main point of the article. It also, as others have pointed out, reads like an advertisement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.143.224.235 (talk) 03:39, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The link at the bottom of the page (http://foxylearning.com/rft) is to a paysite. Is it useful to have such links ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.237.77.238 (talk) 14:22, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. One piece of evidence for how biased this article is is that it omits the findings of the long-term data reported from the Forman et al trial. While it is accurately reported in the page that ACT and CT had comparable efficacy over the short term, it is not reported that over the long term CT was more efficacious than ACT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lluaces (talk • contribs) 18:53, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Edits

Thread retitled from "Conflict of Interest".

With all due respect to Dr. Hayes' edit, this article suffers from a conflict of interest. In addition, the style of writing does not demonstrate a Neutral Point of View as required by wiki. While the edits Dr. Hayes has made to his article may make it unsuitable for the Advertisement tag, it remains predicated and substantialy referenced through Dr. Hayes' own work rather than independently. Some sections are extracts from Dr. Hayes' speeches.

In the introduction, the phrase "empirically based" implies that ACT is "derived from or provable through evidence and/or experiment". This claim is not properly substantiated in the article. Furthermore, the underpinning contexts such as Relational Frame Theory are also theories originated by Dr. Hayes. I have therefore tagged the article as representating a conflict of interest rather than the more aggressive tag of it being an advertisement. I have also tagged it as being based primarily upon one source, Dr. Hayes, and with the tag requesting an improvement to the references used, as they are also primarily of Dr. Hayes' authorship.

I believe that the addition of balancing and contextualising text is required in the article, together with relevant, independent, peer-reviewed citations in order to remove the tags. LookingGlass (talk) 17:10, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I note that a key reference in the article, the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science http://www.contextualpsychology.org/hayes_luoma_bond_masuda_lillis_in_press_1 states in the abstract to Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006: There are not enough well-controlled studies to conclude that ACT is generally more effective than other active treatments across the range of problems examined, but so far the data are promising.. This statement, which is far from the strength of the claims in the article, appears to be an independent observation merely of the study's own conclusion.

LookingGlass (talk) 17:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a simple solution to this problem. The conflict of interest is not so much in that Dr Hayes is promoting his own works, but that in essence Dr Hayes is the originator of the information, and this the information is original research. As this sort of information is a violation of Wikipedia's standards there is only one solution: If Dr Hayes is willing, he should go through the article and add citations to sources that support the information shown here. He must also at the same time remove any POV statements which infer conclusions from the data which originated in his own works. Doing so would not only validate the article far beyond any self proclaimed statements, but would lend some credence to his own conclusions even though they may not be mentioned in the article directly. I would be interested to see information on what other experts (like the aformentioned Luoma, Bond, Masuda, and Lillis) have written on the subject. Unfortunately it seems the only person who can resolve this is Dr Hayes himself since he's the only one who knows where he got all his data. KrisWood (talk) 22:51, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

ACBS website?

At the bottom of the page, it states "ACT did not arise from these related areas directly — it is the result of a 25 year course of development inside Western science — but it arrived at a similar place which is interesting in and of itself. The connections [between ACT and Scientology,est,etc] have been explored in several articles that can be found on the ACBS website. The intellectual history of ACT can be found there as well." I've found the intellectual history of ACT on the website, but I feel I've scoured the website and can find nothing about ACT and its "connections" with scientology, est, or whatever else. Could you be a little more specific please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.68.250.128 (talk) 05:32, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I read this article and it had one person suggesting it was 'cultlike' with a following and being intolerant of internal dissent with a take it or leave it mentality. I have changed the wording which seems to be too NPOV violating and unsupported by the citation. fwiw. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.17.87.48 (talk) 21:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

New Study Results (April 2009)

I thought this article might be of interest: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090403080729.htm

Quoting the article, in part (emphasis mine):

"There are now a substantial number of controlled trials investigating the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). This meta-analysis combined multiple well-controlled studies to help clarify the overall impact of ACT relative to waiting lists, psychological placebos, treatment as usual, and established therapies."

"Analyzed separately ACT was superior to waiting lists and psychological placebos (effect size = 0.68) and treatment as usual (effect size = 0.42). However, ACT was not significantly more effective than established treatments (effect size = 0.18, p = 0.13). Also, ACT was not superior to control conditions for the distress problems (anxiety/depression: effect size = 0.03, p = 0.84)."

"The results reveal that ACT is more effective than control conditions for several problem domains, but there is no evidence yet that ACT is more effective than established treatments."

Please read the full article for more information and to review the quotes above in context. I do not believe those quotes violates copyright laws since I am providing the citation as given on that webpage. Unfortunately, I am not very familiar with editing wiki articles so someone may need to clean this up for me.

Citation: Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (2009, April 3). Does A New Popular Form Of Psychotherapy (Acceptance And Commitment Therapy) Work?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 3, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090403080729.htm

I hope someone can use this information to further develop the main article for this subject. I believe it may assist in the conflicts above so that the main page could be more balanced and informative. --76.30.105.105 (talk) 16:11, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

The Evidence for claim of "empirically based" treatment

Returning, I have once again been drawn to search for the references and validation of the theory and claims in this article. I have found the following:

Refs 1, 5, 6, 9, 14 and 15 are authored by Hayes (15 is addressed below) Refs 2, 4, 10, 16 and 18 refer to a website "Behaviour Analyst Online" where I could find no corresponding reference material Ref 8 is a listing on the APA Chapter 12 site

The remaining references: 3, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15 and 17 are as follows:

ref #3 Contains substantial parts of the text of this article. It is an account by a Dr and ACT trainer in Australia (Harris) in a "popular" psychology magazine. I was unable to check the references given in the article.

ref #7 I was unable to locate any reference online to this but found something under the hits I got that seems similar. See new reference at bottom of this.

ref #11 An abstract can be found here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h78q3474700747mg/ it reads that "well-being outcomes were mediated to a degree by ACT"

ref #12 is incomplete.

ref #13 Öst, L. G. (March 2008). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258216 "Efficacy of the third wave of behavioral therapies: a systematic review and meta-analysis". Behaviour research and therapy 46 (3): 296–321. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2007.12.005. PMID 18258216. states: "none of the third wave therapies fulfilled the criteria for empirically supported treatments"

ref #15 The abstract on ERIC at http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ804033&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ804033 states: "Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are both innovative behavioral treatments ... This article discusses these similarities and differences"

ref #17 Cloud, John (2006-02-05). "The Third Wave of Therapy". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156613-9,00.html/. This article seems to me to be critical of ACT in many ways stating for instance that: "Hayes and his followers seem to be offering ACT as a sort of psychological Rosetta stone, a key for interpreting all interior events. At the very least, as Hayes' mentor Barlow has pointed out, ACT seems to lack the scientific virtue of parsimony."

I was able to find one reference that did appear to support ACT:

http://bmo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/31/6/772 "A Randomized Controlled Effectiveness Trial of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Therapy for Anxiety and Depression" The abstract states that this research was on a trail 101 patients and that: "the results suggest that ACT is a viable and disseminable treatment, the effectiveness of which appears equivalent to that of CT"

There would seem to be therefore no evidence to support the article's claims that it is "is an empirically based" treatment with the inference that the empirical data substantiates ACT's claims to be an effective treatment. The citations provided by Dr Hayes hinself, if anything, seem to demonstrate the reverse. This cannot be taken to show that the treatment and theory is not well founded, simply that its claims to an empirical provenance are misplaced and misleading. The article should be revised to accord with the evidence base that is available.

LookingGlass (talk) 16:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The more I look into the topic, the more it seems 'scientifically based' in the same way as science fiction, Scientology and pseudoscience is 'based' on science. It pure junk science and a prime example of the replication crisis in science. Plenty of reviews, analyses and meta-analyses, but never any attempt to repeat the results of the existing studies. It's all worthless. 2A00:23C6:7627:DE01:3F2B:43EC:DFF8:CA2C (talk) 02:40, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Research

ACT has a broad empirical base. The comments on here about it lacking this is almost laughable. Please go to an academic library with the proper journal access, instead of basing your OPINIONS on Time Maganzine and the like. Also, here's an idea, have some knowledge about psychological theories, before you criticize them. Without this, it's like me trying to prove that plutonium isn't radioactive. Just in case you don't have access to a academic library, try these for starters.

Ruiz, F. J. (2010). A review of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) empirical evidence: Correlational, experimental psychopathology, component and outcome studies. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 10, 125-162.

Dalrymple, K.L. & Herbert, J.D. (2007). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder: A pilot study. Behavior Modification, 31, 543-568.

McCracken, L. M., Vowles, K. E., & Eccleston, C. (2005). Acceptance-based treatment for persons with complex, long standing chronic pain: A preliminary analysis of treatment outcome in comparison to a waiting phase. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 1335-1346.

As you can see, none of these have the name Hayes in them, so therefore, Stephen Hayes wasn't involved in the study. And those journals are widely read and peer reviewed. ALL psychological theories are constantly being reviewed, studied and discussed. Hence the term theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.66.81.140 (talk) 18:34, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Balance

Thread retitled from "Fascinating".

The ancient Chinese would have said "know yourself, and you will reach balance", or something like that. We describe it on hundreds of pages of theory. But hey, that's our civilization as opposed to theirs - we relate to the world primarily through categorizing it. None of this is meant in disrespect to the people who spend long hours at hard work trying to help people with psychological problems. It's just an observation that I thought it'd be interesting to make. That is, if I got the correct idea of the procedure from the article.

This talk page also shows that as much as standards are being upheld and improved at Wikipedia, the chances when pitting Wiki work against peer-reviewed literature and professional researchers are still slim. I have absolutely no idea who is in the right here, as I haven't read a single line of any of the referenced works. But I do recommend to anyone trying to prove one way or the other to limit themselves to scientific ("peer-reviewed") journals, and also to check for impact factor, citation counts, recency, and the number and quality of references the paper you are referencing itself makes. That's how weight is thrown around in the scientific community. :-) 89.102.231.111 (talk) 21:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC) User:Misacek01 currently logged out

Empirical base of ACT

A good list of empirical studies on ACT can be found on the ACBS website (www.contextualpsychology.org). We are very close to 50 randomized controlled trials as of summer 2011. Some of them are small and for sure we have a long way to go, but that is how science is.

If quality of evidence is the focus here is a quick and dirty method: just look at the top clinical psychology journal in the world, the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Here are the studies there (and one more in substance abuse is very close as of 9/2/2011):

Twohig, M. P., Hayes, S. C., Plumb, J. C., Pruitt, L. D., Collins, A. B., Hazlett-Stevens, H. & Woidneck, M. R. (2010) A randomized clinical trial of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy vs. Progressive Relaxation Training for obsessive compulsive disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78, 705-716.

Varra, A. A., Hayes, S. C., Roget, N., & Fisher, G. (2008). A randomized control trial examining the effect of Acceptance and Commitment Training on clinician willingness to use evidence-based pharmacotherapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 449-458.

Gregg, J. A., Callaghan, G. M., Hayes, S. C., & Glenn-Lawson, J. L. (2007). Improving diabetes self-management through acceptance, mindfulness, and values: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75(2), 336-343.

Bach, P. & Hayes, S. C. (2002). The use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to prevent the rehospitalization of psychotic patients: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70 (5), 1129-1139.

If you expand to the top two journals in cognitive behavior therapy (BRAT and Behavior Therapy) you pick up another dozen RCTs from labs all around the world. Both the American Psychological Association and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the US recognize ACT as evidence-based (the links are now in the main article on ACT). ACT is part of a larger research program from an entire research and practice community as some time on the ACBS website will show. It's a serious effort and we welcome criticism.

Steven C. Hayes (talk) 14:51, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I am very late to the party here, but I was just reading through these comments and laughed when I read Steven C. Hayes' statement above: "If quality of evidence is the focus there is a quick and dirty method: just look at the top clinical psychology journal in the world, the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology." I laughed because I recently read a couple of blog posts by James C. Coyne that are very critical of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. According to Coyne, JCCP is a "vanity journal", and a "quick and dirty" look at JCCP would not tell you much about quality of evidence. Here are a couple of excerpts from Coyne's posts, two years apart:

"Questionable research practices (QRPs) in clinical psychology are maintained and amplified by questionable publication practices (QPPs). The premier psychology journal for publishing randomized trials is Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. It is a vanity journal with a strong confirmation bias and a distinct aversion to publishing null findings and replications. Until recently, letters to the editor were not even allowed. When the ban was relaxed a few years ago, a high bar was set for accepting them. Statistics about the rate of acceptance of letters to the editor are not available, but accounts from colleagues suggest that criticisms of basic flaws in articles that have been published are suppressed. JCCP is not a journal hospitable to post-publication peer review. Publication of flawed studies in JCCP go undetected and unannounced, except through alternative post publication peer review, outside the journal, such as PubMed Commons comments and blogging.... We need to confront directly JCCP's policy of limiting publication to articles that are newsworthy and that claim to be innovative, at the expense of being robust and solid clinical psychological science." — Coyne, James C. (5 July 2016). "A bad response to the crisis of untrustworthiness in clinical psychological science". jcoynester.wordpress.com. Retrieved 20 January 2017.

"As it now stands, the psychotherapy literature does not provide a dependable guide to policy makers, clinicians, and consumers attempting to assess the relative costs and benefits of choosing a particular therapy over others. If such stakeholders uncritically depend upon the psychotherapy literature to evaluate the evidence-supported status of treatments, they will be confused or misled. Psychotherapy research is scandalously bad.... Departures from preregistered protocols in published reports of RCTs are common, and there is little checking of discrepancies in abstracts from results that were actually obtained or promised in preregistration by authors. There is inconsistent and incomplete adherence to these requirements. There is little likelihood that noncompliant authors will held accountable and high incentive to report positive findings in order for a study is to be published in a prestigious journal such as the APA's Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP). Examining the abstracts of papers published in JCCP gives the impression that trials are almost always positive, even when seriously underpowered. Psychotherapy research is conducted and evaluated within a club, a mutual admiration society in which members are careful not to disparage others' results or enforce standards that they themselves might want relaxed when it comes to publishing their own research. There are rivalries between tribes like psychodynamic therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, but suppression of criticism within the tribes and in strenuous efforts to create the appearance that members of the tribes only do what works." — Coyne, James C. (10 June 2014). "Salvaging psychotherapy research: a manifesto". plos.org. PLOS. Archived from the original on 1 May 2015. Retrieved 20 January 2016. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 1 May 2016 suggested (help)

This comment is not intended to question the quality of Hayes' research in particular, merely to provide another perspective on the suggestion that a list of studies published in JCCP is a good indicator of quality of evidence. Biogeographist (talk) 02:34, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Correction of case for "acceptance and commitment therapy" to "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy"

Wikipedia style as laid out in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters states that "Philosophies, theories, doctrines, and systems of thought do not begin with a capital letter, unless the name derives from a proper noun." However I clam an exception needs to be made in the case of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for two reasons: First, the name is title-cased in all source materials, without exception; and second and more importantly, there are now enough acceptance-based movements or techniques within the field of applied psychology that not to acknowledge proper names as such (e.g. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, versus acceptance and commitment therapy) begins to risk confusion over whether the reference is to a specific therapy or acceptance-based therapies in general. Thus title case ought to be used for clarity. I don't know if an exception needs more discussion than this, but I'm certainly open to it. Whole Sight (talk) 11:11, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Acceptance and commitment therapy → Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – There are now several acceptance-based or mindfulness-based therapies in applied psychology - as the article mentions, these include not only ACT, but "Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Functional Analytic Psychotherapy, and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy." Even a cursory web search reveals many such references to "acceptance-based therapies," "an acceptance-based approach," etc. E.g. Acceptance-based treatment for persons with complex, long standing chronic pain: a preliminary analysis of treatment outcome in comparison to a waiting phase, Acceptance Therapy & Generalized Anxiety Disorder, ec.

Thus, adopting within Wikipedia the widespread usage outside Wikipedia of proper names for these different therapies - e.g. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - will aid in distinguishing a particular therapy from the more general topic, when it may occur, of acceptance-based therapies, as well as from ad hoc mentions of a single new approach that is described as "acceptance-based" or an "acceptance therapy" but has not yet been codified further. relisted--Mike Cline (talk) 20:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)Whole Sight (talk) 11:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Merge discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Sources mention Association for Contextual Behavioral Science in relation to Acceptance and commitment therapy. Would it be appropriate to merge in material from Association for Contextual Behavioral Science into a dedicated section in Acceptance and commitment therapy? SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 09:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

The Association claims a broader mission than just Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT). This broader mission is said to include research into, and application of, Relational frame theory (a.k.a. RFT, a behavioral theory concerned with verbal learning and cognition) in contexts other than psychotherapy. However at present the Wikipedia article for Relational frame theory gives only an extremely brief list of applications - only Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and a measurement tool are mentioned. This tends to suggest that at present, ACBS is still mostly centered around ACT, and only around RFT to the extent that RFT supports ACT. So part of justifying or supporting a separate article for ACBS might involve the fleshing out of the article on RFT as having significant additional applications, if reliable sources can be found to do this. Whole Sight (talk) 14:13, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

RFT has more applications than just ACT. There's a book on autism, mostly relying on RFT (not completely), but not ACT at all: see here. There's a study of 2012 on the IRAP (a RFT-application) as predictive of relapse in substance abuse. RFT is larger (and I think more important, but that's a subjective evaluation) than ACT. ACBS can be mentioned in the ACT-article, but not merged; just as you cannot merge ACT and RFT.--Queeste (talk) 17:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me like the organization is referenced more often with regards to this therapy than RFT so a merge to this article would be better. Honestly, your point about it covering more than one subject is part of the reason why I thought deletion was the appropriate course. This is an alternative route that would preserve the information while satisfying the fact there is no real established notability for the organization.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 16:57, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

To be clear: this discussion has just been finished. ACBS stays a separate article: no redirect, no merging. These are just synonyms for deletion. Discussion is closed as decided by an administrator.--Queeste (talk) 17:35, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

What are you talking about? I see no indication that there has been any discussion aside from here and the AfD and the discussion here was initiated by the admin who closed the AfD.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 04:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I can read, thanks. Makes no difference: discussion has been closed. Merging (redirect) has been mentioned in that discussion. The conclusion was clear: ACBS can stay. Now if everyone would suddenly change ideas and agree: ok. If not ...? I would have accepted deletion without problem; as mentioned in that discussion. Silk Tork decided otherwise. So now I expect loyal acception by the opponents, unless completely new arguments would arise; this is clearly not the case.--Queeste (talk) 06:51, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Queeste, if you persist in applying your own personal, preferred definitions to Wikipedia processes, this is only going to cause friction. Your interpretation here that a merge cannot be considered because a delete was ruled out is not correct by Wikipedia standards. And we are working inside Wikipedia, not in a world that plays by your rules alone. I support your general position on ACBS as a significant organization outside of ACT, but please, do read up on Wikipedia guidelines so we can talk about the proposed merge (and any other issues that arise) in a constructive manner. I am hopeful you will hear what I am saying. Whole Sight (talk) 12:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment I have added material to the page on Relational frame theory, or RFT, that more clearly demonstrates significant applications of RFT outside of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. And since ACBS is the parent body behind research into RFT, and since RFT is now being advanced as significant in such additional fields as evolutionary biology (thanks to an ongoing collaboration between evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson and ACBS), I claim it would be a content error to try and force ACBS under the umbrella of ACT solely. I.e. the proposed merge might have been appropriate 10 years ago, but it is no longer appropriate now. Hoping to get some discussion going on this claim! Whole Sight (talk) 12:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• Comment My thought is we should finally just put this to bed with a redirect. While supporters of the therapy want an independent article, nothing has been provided to establish that it needs an article. A merge would, based on the comments above, be unwarranted as the organization is involved in several different therapies and I don't think we have any real information about the organization as the existing article mostly talks about the therapy. It seems clear it is only mentioned frequently as it concerns this therapy. Really, I think the case for its existence at all is kind of flimsy, but it definitely does not merit its own independent article.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 06:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

There is no clear consensus here for merging into Acceptance and commitment therapy. Is there a more appropriate parent article - one that embraces both Acceptance and commitment therapy and Relational frame theory? The material here appears to be useful, though notability for a stand alone article is still disputed; it would be helpful to find the most appropriate place for it. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 13:38, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, as the only people objecting appear to have a strong bias towards the subject and thus want as many independent articles as possible I would say there is more of a consensus to merge. Of course, it would be nice to have some additional outside input.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 14:43, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Response to SilkTort: The problem with creating a parent article that would embrace both ACT and RFT is that from both a theoretical and historical point of view, RFT embraces ACT and includes other efforts and applications that are not ACT. In other words ACT and RFT are not parallel within this particular knowledge domain. So some more accurate configuration is required that positions appropriately not only RFT and ACT, but does so in the context of existing topics on Radical behaviorism and Functional contextualism among others. And pax to Devil's Advocate, the point of an encyclopedia is not only to be internally consistent in how knowledge is represented per its standards, but to accurately mirror that knowledge as it exists in source material, i.e. "the real world." Frankly I am hoping that persons knowledgeable with the domain and the scholarship involved will get involved with this series of related articles and add to them sufficiently that they end up meeting both tests. Per the philosophy suggested by Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress, I am hoping there will be some graciousness here on the part of Wikipedians to let this process unfold within the next one to three months or so. Whole Sight (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Buddhism and ACT

I removed the sentence, "The mindfulness strategies in ACT have similarities to mystical aspects of some major spiritual and religious traditions such as Buddhism." from the criticisms section. The article cited merely points out that there are parallels between Buddhism and ACT. This, in and of itself, is not a criticism and has nothing to do with mysticism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khimaris (talk • contribs) 01:29, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Relation to CBT

Thread retitled from "ACT is not a form of CBT".

And it says so right in the article. So why was it categorized under CBT? I changed it to category:psychotherapy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.20.52.210 (talk • contribs) 01:07, 11 January 2013

Like Lova Falk talk 11:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The article reads: "ACT differs from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)" rather than that ACT is NOT a form of CBT. AFAIK CBT ia a category of psychotherapy, so perhaps ACT should be in both? LookingGlass (talk) 13:29, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

yes it is...commonly known as 3rd wave CBT. A quick google search can confirm [[1]] and even by the man who invented ACT [[2]]. cheers --Earlypsychosis (talk) 08:21, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Basics

Thread retitled from "Incomprehensible gobbledygook".

The basics section is not basic. It is incomprehensible nonsense. Please can someone rewrite this section in plain english? Pigmy vines (talk) 19:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

"Everything I don't understand immediately is nonsense" - Pigmy vines. It seems pretty clear given an understanding of the terms used. Do you go to articles on high-level maths and complain that all this talk about "tensors" is incomprehensible and should be written in plain english? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.65.71.133 (talk) 19:22, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

@SineBot - well dude, this is an article on an experimental form of CBT not maths. ACT is a form of talk therapy intended to help just about anyone and if it cannot be explained without a sweep of jargon-dense verbiage in the "basics" section of Wiki, then I agree it needs to be rewritten. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.121.119.134 (talk) 14:52, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

I thought that the examples in Table 1 in this webpage explained the concept more concretely than the article. Perhaps we should add some examples. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:14, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Additional

What are peoples thoughts on this text and source?

"Some evidence suggests that ACT can be effective in treating insomnia, and that that this approach may be better than traditional CBT-I, particularly when sleep anxiety is a cause.Meadows, Guy. "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Insomnia (ACT-I)". Assoc. for Contextual Behavioural Science. Retrieved 28 December 2016."

My concern is that it does not appear to be peer review? I am not convinced it is a sufficient source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:14, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

We have a review of CBT and ACT for insomnia that say "As with adult disorders, child and adolescent treatment protocols employing CBT have been well tested and validated with strong treatment outcomes." but does not even comment on the use of ACT for insomnia.[3]

But it also seems to imply that ACT is simply a type of CBT. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:18, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that the contextualscience.org website is peer-reviewed. It looks more like an UpToDate kind of resource or the kind of "for healthcare providers" pages that you'll find on official websites marketing drugs. It's likely to be reasonably accurate, but not the best possible source (and possibly not even "barely good enough", for the exact claim that's being made. It'd be more capable of supporting "One doctor holds this POV" than "Here are the facts"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

This source looks better. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:44, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Yup agree looks better. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

both seem to be good sources([4][5])...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. The paper only proposes a conceptual framework. It is not a study that in any way provides evidence of the claim that it can be effective in insomnia treatment. It's literally just an untested hypothesis. 2A00:23C6:7627:DE01:3F2B:43EC:DFF8:CA2C (talk) 02:10, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Recent edits by User:Stevenchayes

I don't know if User:Stevenchayes is really Steven C. Hayes, the creator of ACT, but if he is, he should not be editing this article directly (per WP:COI) and he certainly should not be making edits that cite his own writing, as he did in this recent edit. Wikipedia's plain and simple conflict of interest guide says:

• Do not edit articles about yourself, your family or friends, your organization, your clients, or your competitors.
• Post suggestions and sources on the article's talk page, or in your user space.

Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 14:48, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the information (I rarely post on Wiki so I do not know everything about how it works or how to do thing properly) but the list you just put up (articles about yourself, your family or friends, your organization, your clients, or your competitors) does not apply here. This Wiki article is about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, not about me. I have had a role in the establishment of ACT but so have scores of other people. What I've added is citations any reader can check out and I think what I've said is entirely factual. Put ACT and its relevant terms into a search engine and you will find a thousand scholarly articles on it (double that if you include its basic and applied theory) and a tiny fraction have my name on it. If the COI says you should not comment on things you are an expert on, or cite things you wrote, I stand corrected, but in that case I would appreciate the reference. Thanks User:Stevenchayes (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:32, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Stevenchayes: Thanks for the response. As stated in WP:COI, "Conflict of interest (COI) editing involves contributing to Wikipedia about yourself, family, friends, clients, employers, or your financial and other relationships. [...] COI emerges from an editor's roles and relationships". There are different kinds of COI: actual, potential, and apparent. Your COI may be more potential than actual, but in either case you are more than just an "expert on" ACT; your relationship to ACT is different than, say, a biologist's relationship to evolution. The theory of evolution would exist whether or not any single biologist exists or had existed (even Charles Darwin, since Alfred Russel Wallace also independently proposed the theory of evolution through natural selection). But would ACT exist without Steven C. Hayes? I doubt it. I can't think of anyone who would be more of a connected contributor to an article on ACT. It's up to you whether you want to follow the COI guidelines or not—perhaps it doesn't matter? Biogeographist (talk) 17:57, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

If you are citing yourself a COI is present.[6] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:39, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Sources

I found quite a few sources that looked like they may be good references when adding information to this page. Does anyone have any feedback in regards to using these sources?

Fung, K. (2017). Handbook of Zen, mindfulness, and behavioral health. New York, New York: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Hofmann, S. G. Asmundson, G. J. G. (2017). The science of cognitive behavioral therapy. Boston, MA: Elsevier.

Masuda, A. (Ed.). (2014). Mindfulness and acceptance in multicultural competency : a contextual approach to sociocultural diversity in theory and practice. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Orsillo, S. (2016). The Oxford handbook of cognitive and behavioral therapies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zettle, R. (2017). The Oxford handbook of mood disorders. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Zettle, R. (2016). The Wiley handbook of contextual behavioral science. Winchester, England: Wiley Blackwell. Abshirec (talk) 02:21, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Abshirec: The appropriateness (or not) of these sources depends on how they are cited in context (see Wikipedia:Citing sources § Text–source integrity). I don't see that there is much to say about these sources apart from their use in relation to particular claims within the article. Biogeographist (talk) 14:43, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Tianna's Peer Review

The structure of this article and what it talks about, I believe was a great set up. The main points of the articles created good understanding for the reader and mentioned great points of what needs to be known about the topic. On the other hand, the article seems short, choppy, and not straight to the point. I feel that the article is almost selling a product is a Psychology magazine. It seems to be out of order, and would have been easier to follow if put in a different order. The core statements should have been placed closer to the beginning of the article where the article begins to describe what the therapy is. Adding more facts, putting it in a different order will help the article when someone reads it. It can be a great article just needs some more work.Tianna Ramos Garcia (talk) 05:52, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

After reading the comment above "It seems to be out of order, and would have been easier to follow if put in a different order", I looked at the article and found that I agreed with this comment. So I moved the "Medical uses" section from the top of the article to later in the article, after more fundamental sections such as "Basics" and "Core principles". Biogeographist (talk) 14:53, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Per WP:MEDMOS "medical uses" goes first.

Have adjusted the headings to makes sense. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: WP:MEDMOS applies to medical articles; this article is about psychotherapy (list of psychotherapies), not medical therapy (list of therapies), and is categorized in WP:PSYCH not WP:MED. What is the argument for why WP:MEDMOS applies here when this article is not in WP:MED? Biogeographist (talk) 03:44, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Also notice that WP:MEDMOS § Content sections states (emphasis added): "The given order of sections is also encouraged but may be varied, particularly if that helps your article progressively develop concepts and avoid repetition. Do not discourage potential readers by placing a highly technical section near the start of your article." Given that this article, as I mentioned above, is not even in WP:MED, that sentence about not discouraging readers by placing a highly technical section near the start of the article would seem to be even more relevant in this article than in medical articles. Biogeographist (talk) 04:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Also see the related article Cognitive behavioral therapy where the "medical uses" section comes AFTER the description of technique (but note that the CBT article is in WP:MED and the ACT article is not). Biogeographist (talk) 04:18, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Sure will fix CBT. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that it's a problem that CBT is in WP:MED, and I'm not opposed to putting ACT and other psychotherapies in WP:MED; if the editors there want to work on and rate psychotherapy articles, why not? Psychotherapy is a related clinical discipline, and like CBT, ACT has a MeSH number: MeSH D064869 (CBT has been a MeSH heading since 1990, ACT only since 2014). Biogeographist (talk) 12:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Recent rewrite of lead

This recent rewrite of the lead by Abshirec (a student editor in Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Southern Oregon University/Introduction to Clinical Psychology (Winter 2018)) is too verbose, and contains claims that belong in other sections. I have reverted to the previous version, and I am pasting Abshirec's lead below. There may be something that can be extracted from this text and integrated into appropriate sections in the article, but in its current form it is too verbose and does not accurately summarize the rest of the article. Remember that per MOS:LEAD, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article"; Abshirec's rewrite of the lead is stuffed with claims that are not covered elsewhere in the article. (The quoted text below is from these edits by Abshirec.) Biogeographist (talk) 12:45, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, typically pronounced as the word "act") is a form of counseling and a branch of clinical behavior analysis. Steven C. Hayes developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 1982 in order to create a mixed approach which integrates both cognitive and behavioral therapy. ACT was originally called comprehensive distancing. ACT seeks to combine multiple factors in order to move the healing process along in a positive way. Acceptance and mindfulness are used to create a change within the person's behavior, to inspire psychological healing and flexibility. Within ACT there is an underlying assumption that people will experience traumatic experiences. When one does not accept what has happened this promotes the longevity of suffering and pain. The creators of ACT developed this therapy on a theory that presumes language perpetuates human suffering. Researchers claim that ACT is built on one of the most highly researched behavior analytic theories; the relational framing theory. Relational framing refers to the associations that are made within one's everyday social environment and provides assumptions or preconceptions about objects or experiences in the future.

The objective of ACT is not elimination of difficult feelings; rather, it is to be present with what life brings us and to "move toward valued behavior". Acceptance and commitment therapy invites people to open up to unpleasant feelings, and learn not to overreact to them, and not avoiding situations where they are invoked. Researchers have found that clients benefit more from ACT than they do from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy when they have multiple diagnoses (comorbidities). Questionnaires have been created to assess the clients acceptance and avoidance levels. A commonly used questionnaire is the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II). These questions seek to evaluate the clients' avoidance tendencies and their amount of psychological flexibility. Researchers have found that when a client is experiencing more distress, it is likely related to their amount of psychological flexibility; higher psychological flexibility promotes more distress).

ACT is difficult to evaluate because of the concepts used within this therapy, such as being in the moment, level of awareness, and level of acceptance. Analysis of the effectiveness of ACT is compromised due to these abstract concepts. For example, its therapeutic effect is a positive spiral where feeling better leads to a better understanding of the truth. In ACT, 'truth' is measured through the concept of 'workability', or what works to take another step toward what matters (e.g. values, meaning). Although, with the transdiagnostic approach researchers have been able to evaluate this therapy in a variety of settings. There are a variety of protocols for ACT, depending on the target behavior or setting. For example, in behavioral health areas a brief version of ACT is called focused acceptance and commitment therapy (FACT). ACT has been empirically supported as treatments for mainly depression but also for obsessive compulsive disorder, chronic pain, and anxiety.The author mentions six different concepts that contribute to psychological flexibility which are acceptance, defusion, self-as-context, mindfulness, committed action, and values. These concepts make up the "Hexaflex model".

Criticisms have been made regarding ACT and the effectiveness of this therapy when used with diverse populations. Approaches that are specific to one region of the world inherently makes the therapy culturally biased. However, they mention that in order to allow therapies like ACT to be culturally competent, the clinician must must take an active role in making sure the therapy is effective and that they are minimizing the amount of negative biases that could come through for the client while participating in the therapy. In order to do so, the clinician must acknowledge how the client is feeling and what they are experiencing to the best of their ability. Researchers have tried to analyze whether ACT has been successful in other cultures, however, they found that many were not sufficiently documenting their clients' demographic information. Evaluating ACT's cultural competence is not possible unless published articles from other cultures/countries start including demographic information for participants.

References

APA line in professional organizations section

"Doctoral-level behavior analysts who are psychologists belong to the American Psychological Association's division 25—Behavior analysis. APA offers a diplomate[clarification needed] in behavioral psychology."

Is this relevant? The other listed professional bodies are all included within the context of their work or interest in ACT; this line doesn't mention it at all and seems as thought it should be removed. I would defer to someone with more expertise? 89.21.230.66 (talk) 11:12, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

It is relevant and true. I added inline references. Biogeographist (talk) 15:43, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Original research

@Stefano3001: Please stop adding the Meichenbaum quotation to this article. There is no explicit connection to ACT in the cited source, so it's original research, prohibited on English Wikipedia. Also, it is good practice to provide an edit summary for each of your edits. Biogeographist (talk) 12:05, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Quotation of James Coyne's blog

What is relevant to this Wikipedia article is not Coyne's personal narrative about how, nine years ago, he discovered the problems in those two ACT trials (readers can read the original blog post if they want that much detail), but the consequence or upshot for ACT in general. The long quotation added by Stefano3001 was WP:UNDUE weight on extraneous detail that distracts from the important upshot.

Clearly I am not opposed to airing criticism of ACT; I seek it out: I added much of the content of this article's criticism section myself. In fact, I am the one who originally added the citation of Coyne's blog post in 2016. But the recently added quotation was not focused enough on the relevant point. In contrast, the shorter quotation of Coyne's blog that I originally added in 2016 is about ACT, not merely about Coyne's step-by-step narrative of events; it says: "Whether or not ACT is more efficacious than other therapies, as its proponents sometimes claim, or whether it is efficacious for psychosis, is debatable". That is the upshot that is relevant to this article.

Also, Stefano3001 called the problems that Coyne identified "tampering with data", which suggests intentional foul play, but Coyne's point wasn't that the ACT researchers were uniquely corrupt, just incompetent in a common way that is an example of more general "limitations of the project to identify evidence supported treatments that now is falling prey to flaws that were built in at the outset", in Coyne's words. Biogeographist (talk) 16:57, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Biogeographist is trying to hide the fact that fraud has been found in research that supposedly showed ACT to be highly effective in preventing rehospitalization of psychotic patients. This is related to the problem that ACT has been promoted as "the holy grail" of psychological therapies.

(In addition, the Biogeographist completely removed an article that I created on another psychotherapy, post-rationalist cognitive therapy. He deleted the article that I created without any serious justification for doing so.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stefano3001 (talk • contribs) 17:36, 24 August 2021 {UTC) (UTC)

Stefano3001 is jumping to conclusions, incorrect conclusions, about my intention. Stefano3001's incorrect accusation that I am trying to hide "fraud" is ludicrous when (1) the cited blog post does not mention fraud, nor does the removed quotation, and (2) I may have added more criticism of ACT to this article than anyone else, certainly more than Stefano3001. Stefano3001's astonishing claim that I had something to do with the move of the article he recently created, Post-rationalist cognitive therapy, to Draft:Post-rationalist cognitive therapy is also incorrect; as the page history shows, Ozzie10aaaa moved the article (see also Draft talk:Post-rationalist cognitive therapy § Move), and its page history also shows that I have never edited the article, so I have nothing at all to do with it. (I did comment on its talk page, so perhaps that confused Stefano3001 somehow? It's difficult to ascertain how Stefano3001 could reach such an incorrect conclusion.) In summary, Stefano3001's completely unsubstantiated and false accusations about me are no refutation of my argument above. Biogeographist (talk) 18:42, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

By the way, I think I've changed my mind about the words "tampering with data", which may be OK as long as it is understood not to necessarily imply foul play as opposed to incompetence. However, the word "fraud" does not accurately label the issue here. Let's recall Wikipedia's definition of fraud: "In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right." Neither Coyne (2012) nor O'Dononue et al. (2016) have accused ACT researchers of fraud. Biogeographist (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2021 (UTC)