Well-being in ACTion: examining the impact of acceptance and commitment training in community-dwelling older adults

Older adults are a growing proportion of the population, and these individuals inevitably experience a variety of changes in multiple life domains (e.g., social, physical, professional). Even still, psychological intervention research aimed at improving well-being in older adults is limited. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT), is one applicable psychological intervention that has been shown to be helpful for a variety of presenting concerns (e.g., depression, chronic pain, anxiety, health behavior change). The current study aimed to explore the impact of a two-session ACT intervention compared to an assessment-only control condition on various well-being outcomes in older adults.

Eighty nonclinical community-dwelling, older adults were randomly assigned to either the ACT intervention condition or to the control condition. Participants completed self-report measures of psychological flexibility, social satisfaction, purpose in life, personal growth, perceived stress, depression, anxiety, and physical activity before the intervention (baseline) and at 1 and 3 months after the intervention to examine differences in change over time between participants in the ACT intervention condition and participants in the assessment-only control condition.

Results indicated that participants in the ACT condition showed significantly greater improvements in personal growth than participants in the control condition at 1-month follow-up; these differences were no longer significant at 3-month follow-up. No other significant differences between conditions on any other measures were observed.

The findings indicate that ACT may be useful for improving personal growth in community-dwelling older adults but may not lead to improvements in other aspects of well-being. The finding that ACT, even in a brief format, can improve personal growth in older individuals is important from a public health perspective. The finding that ACT was not shown to lead to significant improvements in other domains of well-being indicates that older adults who already report high levels of well-being may not receive incremental benefit from an ACT intervention. This provides an important contribution to the psychological intervention literature and indicates that resources for community-based intervention for older adults may be most appropriately allocated to individuals experiencing specific challenges (e.g., chronic pain) or psychological symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety).