Effectiveness of ACT on quality of life, depression, and adherence in people living with HIV

The purpose of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on depression, quality of life, and medication adherence in people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). PLWHA faces numerous behavioral, mental health, and social challenges associated with their illness. For example, 22% to 61% of PLWHA report symptoms of depression (Du et al., 2023). Depression has been associated with a significant decrease in health-related quality of life (HRQoL; Cooper et al., 2017). Improvements in quality of life for PLWHA reduce the risk for probable infections associated with HIV and improves medication adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART; Miners et al., 2014). ACT is a process-based intervention that has demonstrated significant improvements in multiple mental health disorders (Gloster et al., 2020), yet the empirical evidence is very limited in increasing health indicators in PLWHA (Moitra et al., 2015; Skinta et al., 2015). Therefore, the main goal of this project is to advance the CBS research in ACT with PLWHA and investigate the impact of ACT in underexplored areas such as depression, quality of life and treatment adherence and evaluate the maintenance of health gains after the end of the intervention. A pretest-posttest design with a waiting list control group will be implemented in this study. A total of 50 HIV/AIDS positive participants will be randomly assigned to two groups, treatment and waiting list control groups. Depression, psychological flexibility, HRQoL and medication adherence measurements will be administered at pretest, posttest, and at 1- and 3-months follow-up. Participants in the treatment group will receive seven ACT sessions covering topics such as acceptance, values, mindfulness and defusion. We expect the treatment group to show significant improvements in the four outcome measures and demonstrate maintenance over time compared to the waiting list group.