Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Delusions

This chapter describes the psychological treatment of delusions based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), outlining the six core goals of ACT. ACT is one of the most recent developments in functional contextualism for the treatment of a diversity of problems in outpatients. Although it was first developed for the treatment of emotional problems it did not take long for it to spread to the field of psychotic symptoms, and there are conceptual, clinical and empirical reasons for its application in patients with psychosis. In delusions, experiential avoidance, is more elaborate, such that the symptom itself becomes a form of avoidance of some other matter. Delusions are ways of elaborating a reality that does not exist, while at the same time escaping from the one that does.