Effect of Adopting Cultural Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on Mental Health Among COVID-19 Survivors:a Systematic Review

EasyChair Preprint 15763

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has negative implications for mental health and psychological well-being. Studies emphasized that the rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and sleep-related issues were significantly higher during that time. Such an effect has extended up to 18 months even after the pandemic. Obviously, the time during the pandemic was challenging for all populations. However, that time was even more challenging for corona virus survivors, showing higher rates for anxiety and depression disorders. Many interventions were used on such population to improve their psychological well-being, one of them is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which has the intention to improve mental health by encouraging psychological flexibility. The goal of ACT is to help in accepting the current mental and emotional experiences. Therefore, psychological flexibility is considered one of the fundamental core concepts of ACT. A decent body of research has been conducted lately on the positive implications of ACT for many psychologically related disorders, mainly depression, anxiety, coping issues, and many others. When comparing ACT to other intervention it was approved that there is no significant difference between ACT and other psychological interventions. Also, when comparing the two interventions on post-traumatic growth and perceived positive and negative emotions among Corona survivorss. The findings of the current systematic review approved the effectiveness of using ACT as an intervention to reduce negative symptoms, and played a positive role in improving mental health among the targeted population. However, cultural adaption ACT is not fully investigated in Arabs countries and especially in Saudi population.

Keyphrases: (ACT), COVID-19 Survivors, Cultural adoption, interventions, mental health

@booklet{EasyChair:15763,
  author    = {Muna Filali},
  title     = {Effect of Adopting Cultural Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on Mental Health Among COVID-19 Survivors:a Systematic Review},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 15763},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2025}}