The present case study examined effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for a male participant who stuttered, and who worked in a car dealership. The intervention focused on a component of ACT that uses behavioral activation based on valued directions in order to improve the participant’s quality of life (QOL), rather than merely setting a treatment goal of stopping stuttering. To assess the participant’s quality of life, the frequency of behaviors based on his valued directions, such as favorite leisure activities, was counted. The results showed an increase in the frequency of leisure activities, and a decrease in the frequency of stuttering at work. These therapeutic gains were maintained at a 3-month follow-up. These findings suggest that ACT may have helped to (a) improve the participant’s QOL and (b) decrease the frequency of his stuttering, although his stopping stuttering was not the main purpose of the intervention.

The present case study reports the use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with a patient who had social anxiety disorder and chronic pain. The patient was a woman in her 40’s. She had not sufficiently improved after having received pharmacotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). She had sessions of ACT once a week for 12 weeks. After that, her social anxiety disorder decreased, and her back pain was reduced. When ACT is used with a client who had been given CBT, attention should be paid to the possibility that the client may confuse ACT with CBT.

The present case study reports on a case in which a clinical psychologist provided Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to a man diagnosed with depression, who had mild symptoms of anxiety and depression. He had particularly had difficulty with attendance, and requested Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). He recognized his job performance and others’ evaluation of his work, but this recognition did not affect his actions. His activities were limited. The therapist was a beginner in conducting ACT. This case report discusses the process by which the therapist was able to improve his knowledge of the details of ACT through working with the client.

Defusion is one of the 6 core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Its purpose is to diminish the functions of thoughts by changing their context. The present paper introduces an experiment in defusion using kanji (Chinese characters). The participant was a 50-year-old patient with chronic depression, whose main concern was a constant sense of fear and inability to calm down. The patient participated in 12 sessions. The present paper describes the defusion conducted during the third session. This was chosen to report because a decrease in the evaluation measures was found after this session. In this session, at first, the therapist brought up the word rakugosha, meaning “loser,” which the client had fused with, and conducted a word repetition exercise. After that, the therapist had the client switch to a nonsense word, also pronounced rakugosha but written with different characters, ones that mean “happy fun company,” and 1 more word repetition exercise was conducted. The patient stated that the word rakugosha lost its meaning more with the kanji replacement exercise than through word repetition alone. Major improvements after the third session were also observed in the patient’s scores on the Acceptance & Action Questionnaire-II. This suggests the possibility that using kanji in word repetition exercises may increase their effectiveness for defusion.

The present case report describes improvement in a pain disorder after the application of an acceptance and commitment therapy intervention with an emphasis on mindfulness. Initially, the female patient exhibited several experiential avoidance behaviors to continuous somatic symptoms and pain, such as frequently visiting multiple medical institutions. The patient presented with depression due to rumination and worry, increased hypersensitivity to somatic symptoms, and reduction in a range of behaviors, such as housework. During treatment, the mindfulness intervention of observing one’s present experiences openly was emphasized with cognitive defusion, which enabled the patient to distance herself from her thoughts and to prevent an association between her current experience and her past failures or future worries, and with acceptance, which enabled her to observe her present experience without avoidance. After the intervention, self-as-process and self-as-context were acquired, which enabled the monitoring and suspension of her habitual actions and thoughts; moreover, the range of behaviors that gained positive reinforcement in her daily life increased, together with an acceptance of her somatic symptoms, and her trait anxiety and depression decreased.

The purpose of the present study was to examine mechanisms underlying self-control from the perspective of relational responding, through an analysis of the relationship between the ability to specify a contingency and to establish temporal derived relational responding, and between self-control and the ability to transform stimulus functions in according with temporal and comparative relations. Elementary school students (N＝33) completed a temporal and comparative relational task intended as a measure of relational ability, a reverse task and a picture arrangement task to measure their ability to specify contingencies, and a delay-discounting questionnaire and social maturity scale to assess self-control. Participants who passed the relational test also obtained high scores on the picture arrangement. However, no significant relationship was found between relational ability and self-control. The discussion deals with the role of temporal and comparative relational framing in self-control.

The present study aimed to develop the Defusion Process Questionnaire (DPQ) and confirm its reliability and validity. First, valid behavior classes (sets of behaviors with similar functions) involved in the defusion behavior process were identified. Then, a new questionnaire comprised of 40 items was developed and completed by college students. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that the Defusion Process Questionnaire had a 3-factor pattern with 18 items: “Awareness of Oneself”, “Choice and Acting”, and “Contact with Present Moment”. The analysis indicated that the defusion had 3 “functions.” Cronbach’s α coefficient was sufficiently high, and the questionnaire met the usual standards of convergent validity. Future studies should examine relations among defusion and other behavioral processes relevant to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and various clinical symptoms, in order to develop an understanding of how defusion assuages mental pain.

The present case study examined the effectiveness of an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) protocol for the enhancement of sport performance. The participant was a 21-year-old male college archer. Intervention was carried out over 13 sessions (about 60 minutes/session). The goal of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, to increase his psychological flexibility, was fostered by various processes, including experiential avoidance, values, and committed action. The participant stated that competitive stress produced unwanted emotions such as frustration, and unwanted sensations such as a tremor in his legs. Using a variety of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy exercises, he was able to gain an experiential understanding of the problem of experiential avoidance, set a small goal, and identify how to achieve it, based on values and committed action. The participant’s archery score was the performance index. The results showed that, after the sessions, his archery score improved, and his experiential avoidance slightly decreased. The participant also reported that he had enjoyed himself at a competition and had not become frustrated. These results suggest that an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy intervention might enhance collegiate athletes’ archery performance by improving their psychological flexibility.