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Using an acceptance and commitment therapy app to reduce anxiety for students and employees

Abstract
Smartphone applications may ensure greater access to services for the many people who experience anxiety and other psychological issues but do not receive adequate treatment. ACTCompanion® is a mHealth application that incorporates Acceptance and Commitment Therapy principles into daily exercises that assist the user to confront their negative internal experiences and work towards valued outcomes. We used a single-subject A-B design with nine students and 10 employees experiencing high daily anxiety. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires before and after app use. They completed the DAS-A regularly so we could monitor anxiety levels over time. Daily anxiety levels reduced in the intervention phase, and remained low for six participants for whom follow-up data were available. There was also a significant improvement in scores of anxiety, depression, stress, positive and negative effect, psychological flexibility, and mindfulness. Our results suggest that mHealth applications have potential to improve people’s psychological functioning.
Type
Journal Article
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Sargisson, R. J., Li, F., Lobo, D. A., & Roche, M. A. (2019). Using an acceptance and commitment therapy app to reduce anxiety for students and employees. International Journal of Psychology & Behavior Analysis, 5(2), 164–164. https://doi.org/10.15344/2455-3867/2019/164
Date
2019
Publisher
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
© 2019 Sargisson et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.