effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on the competitive-state anxiety of warfare victims who are professional athletes

aims the competitive state anxiety refers to all the temporary excitement of the athlete in the competitive environment of the sport, which is associated with concern and tension. the aim of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy on the competitive state anxiety of veterans, who are football athletes. materials methods this study was a semi-experimental research with post-test pretest and follow-up design with control group conducted on 30 veterans, who were football athletes in yazd province in 2013-2012. they were selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to control and study group (each group is 15 people). in study group, participants received 8 training sessions (each session took 120 minutes) based on acceptance and commitment therapy and control group received no intervention. the instrument of the research was the competitive state anxiety questionnaire of martens et al. the data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (mancova) and bonferroni post hoc test, using spss 20 software. findings there was a significant difference between the mean post-test scores of the study group and the control group. in other words, acceptance and commitment therapy resulted in a significant increase in self-confidence scores and a significant decrease in physical and cognitive anxiety scores in athletes (p 0.01). this improvement was persistent until follow-up. conclusion acceptance and commitment therapy is effective in reducing the level of anxiety (cognitive and physical) and increasing self-confidence in veterans, who are football athletes.