The effectiveness of positivist psychotherapy on inefficient attitudes and experiential avoidance on students with generalized anxiety disorder

Introduction: Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) causes various psychological, emotional and academic damages in the students. Aim: The present study was conducted with the purpose of investigating the effectiveness of positivist psychotherapy on inefficient attitudes and experiential avoidance in the students with generalized anxiety disorder. Method: It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest and control group design. The statistical population of the current study included female students with generalized anxiety in the city of Ahvaz in academic year 2018-2019. 30 female students with generalized anxiety disorder were selected through purposive sampling method and they were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups (each group of 15). The experimental group received ten seventy-five-minute sessions of positivist psychotherapy intervention (Rashid, 2015). The applied questionnaires included inefficient attitudes questionnaire (Wiseman and Beck, 1978), experiential avoidance questionnaire (Bond, et.al, 2011) and generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire (Spitzer et.al, 2006). The data were analyzed through MANCOVA method. Results: The results showed that positivist psychotherapy has significant effect on ineffective attitudes and experiential avoidance in female students with generalized anxiety disorder (P<0.001) in a way that it succeeded in reducing inefficient attitudes and experiential avoidance in the female students with generalized anxiety disorder up to 78% and 59% respectively. Conclusion: Findings of the present study revealed that the positivist psychotherapy can be applied as an efficient therapy to decrease inefficient attitudes and experiential avoidance in the students with generalized anxiety disorder through employing techniques such as knowing personal abilities and concentrating on positive emotions.