the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy on medical science students’ subjective well-being, psychological distress, and emotion regulation

Background and aims: subjective well-being as a major prerequisite of health ensures mental and physical health, a long life, happiness, improved quality of life, and higher socioeconomic indices. the present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (mbct) and acceptance and commitment therapy (act) on subjective well-being, psychological distress, and emotion regulation in medical science students. methods: the statistical population of this semi-experimental comprised all female students at kerman university of medical sciences (iran) in the academic year of 2019-2020. forty-five students referring to the university counseling center were selected as the sample of the study using convenience sampling and randomly divided into two experimental groups and a control group (n = 15 per group). the first and second experimental groups underwent eight 90- and 45-sessions (twice a week) of mbct and of act, respectively. the research instruments included the subjective well-being scale (sws), the depression, anxiety, and stress scale, and the cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire. results: the results showed that mbct and act were effective in improving the components of subjective well-being and emotion regulation in medical students (p < 0.001). moreover, mbct and act significantly reduced the post-test scores of psychological distress subscales in the experimental group compared to the control group (p < 0.001). finally, no difference was observed between the two therapies in terms of effectiveness. conclusion: according to the results, mbct and act effectively promoted female students’ subjective well-being and emotion regulation and alleviated their psychological distress.