The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy based psychoeducation program on the emotion regulation difficulties and the mindfulness of students who is preparing for university examination

The purpose of this study is to examine and describe the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy based psychoeducation program on the emotion regulation difficulties and the mindfulness of students who are preparing for university examination. In this study, a quasi-experimental design with a a control group based on the pre-test, post-test and follow-up test model was used. The study group of the research consists of 18 female and 6 male students who are preparing for the university exam in a private secondary education institution in İzmir. Purposive sampling was used in the study. The age range of the members participating in the research varies between 17-21. The average age of the participants is 18.2. In the study, a psychoeducation program based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, consisting of 8 sessions, was applied to the members of the experimental group (5 women, 2 men). On the other hand, the members of control group, did not receive any intervention. While collecting data in the study, Personal Information Form, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Mindfulness Scale were used. After the implementation of the psychoeducation program, the follow-up test was applied 5 weeks after the implementation of the psychoeducation program. Mann Whitney U Test was used to compare the experimental and control groups while performing data analysis. The Friedman Two-Way ANOVA Test was used to detect the difference between repeated measurements of the study group, and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to examine the difference between the data obtained from the study group. When the findings were examined, it was concluded that the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy-based psychoeducation program reduced the emotion regulation difficulties of the students preparing for the university examination, but this effect was not significant. It was observed that the difficulty in emotion regulation scores of the control group increased significantly. When the post-test and follow-up test scores of the two groups were compared, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the difficullties in emotion regulation follow-up test scores of the experimental and control groups in favor of the experimental group. The difficulties in emotion regulation follow-up test scores of the experimental group were significantly lower than the scores of the control group. When the results are examined, it can be said that the program based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy reduces the difficulty in emotion regulation of the students preparing for the university exam and prevents the possible increase in difficulty in emotion regulation as the exam approaches. Considering the findings in terms of the mindfulness variable, it was determined that there was a significant increase in the post-intervention scores of the experimental group compared to the pre-intervention scores and this difference was maintained in the follow-up test. When the mindfulness scores of the control group were examined, no significant difference was found between the pre-test, posttest and follow-up test. When the mindfulness post-test and follow-up test scores of the experimental group and the control group were compared, it was observed that there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group. When the mindfulness scores of the control group were examined, no significant difference was found between the pre-test, post-test and follow-up test. Therefore, it has been concluded that the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy-based program is effective in increasing the mindfulness of students preparing for the university examination.