Are there advantages of ACT as compared to traditional CBT?
Ultimately this is an empirical question. After considering that we can look at the possible advantages in a theoretical sense. Right now there are a handful of studies that have looked directly and they tend to be medium to small. Only a few are published, and one of these barely mentions outcome because it was a piece on process of change. So we have a long way to go before this question will be answered empirically. Here are the studies done so far: Rob Zettle, who trained with Beck, did two very small randomized trials on ACT versus CT for depression – one using individual ACT and CT and the other using ACT and CT group therapy. A larger multi-site randomized trial is underway right now. In his two studies (see the ACT Handout) he found Cohen’s d’s at post between ACT and CT of 1.23 (individually delivered) and .53 (group) and at follow-up of .92 and .75. The N was very small though. The ACT group was only an N of 6 in the individual study and about 10 or so in the group study. The
