In this study, the effects of acceptance and commitment therapy-based group psychoeducation applied to nursing students on psychological flexibility and somatic symptoms will be examined. The research will be carried out as a randomized controlled experimental study with a pre-test-post-test and follow-up design.
The stress factors that nursing students encounter differ from other students. One of the reasons for this is that the nursing curriculum includes working simultaneously in both theoretical and clinical environments. In a study, it was determined that nursing students' lack of stress coping skills caused internal stressors to turn into external stressors. When these individuals cannot cope with situations that cause stress, they can express the stress they experience with somatic symptoms. Somatic symptom disorder is defined as the state of seeking help for mental problems with somatic symptoms. The inability to treat these somatic symptoms of individuals forces them to live with these symptoms for years and sometimes for a lifetime and continue to seek treatment. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which provides a new perspective for individuals to cope with stressful life events, aims to gain psychological flexibility, which is the capacity for individuals to experience challenging conditions at the moment they are in and to behave in a way that is compatible with their value areas under these conditions. The opposite of psychological flexibility is psychological inflexibility. Experiential avoidance is one of the basic components of the concept of psychological inflexibility. The state of escape and avoidance and actions that occur when an individual does not want to be in contact with situations that stress them are defined as experiential avoidance. When the relevant literature is examined, it has been reported that somatic symptoms are seen as experiential avoidance behaviors in individuals. The continuity of somatic symptoms as a reaction to stress, their inability to intervene, and their chronicity cause them to turn into a somatic somatic symptom disorder. Since nursing students are a highly stressed group, their reactions to stress should be observed, somatic symptoms in these students should be evaluated, and psychological flexibility should be increased before somatic symptoms turn into disorders and students start their professions, and healthier members of the profession should be trained in terms of mental and physical health. However, psychosocial intervention studies that will help with somatic symptoms continue to be the subject of very little research.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
54
Acceptance and commitment therapy-based group psychoeducation aimed at increasing nursing students' psychological flexibility and reducing their somatic symptoms.
Tuğba Yildirim
Merkez, Çankırı, Turkey (Türkiye)
Change in the Psychological Flexibility Scale
The Psychological Flexibility Scale consists of 28 items and five sub-dimensions. The sub-dimensions of the scale are: "Values and committed action", "Contact with the present moment", "Acceptance", "Self as Context" and "Defusion." The increase in the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions and total scores of the scale means that individuals are psychologically flexible. The lowest score that can be obtained from the scale is 28, and the highest is 196.
Time frame: Baseline, 8th week, 1st month follow-up, 3rd month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design
Bradford Somatic Symptom Inventory Change
Bradford Somatic Inventory consists of 44 items. It questions the individual's experience of a wide variety of somatic symptoms on less than 15 days or more than 15 days during the previous month. In the total score of the scale, 0-25 is the low range, 26-40 is the medium range, and\>40 is the high range.
Time frame: screening, baseline, 8th week, 1st month follow-up, 3rd month follow-up) (Pretest-posttest follow-up experimental design)
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