Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Functional Contextualism, and Clinical Social Work

Abstract

The practice of clinical social work requires interventions that are consistent with social work values, applicable across a range of presenting problems, capable of being applied in multiple contexts, supported by extensive research, and consonant with social work’s person-in-environment perspective. This article discusses the fit between social work and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy that meets all of these criteria. ACT is based on a philosophy of science, functional contextualism, that focuses on the behavior of individuals within their historical and situational contexts. ACT draws on a comprehensive theory of language, relational frame theory (RFT), which accounts for the influence of culturally shaped language processes on learning and human behavior. ACT and RFT are supported by a growing body of research that supports ACT’s efficacy with a wide variety of problems and suggests that ACT works by its theorized mechanism of change. ACT can be delivered in an array of formats and is easily accessible for those seeking training, and ACT offers a nonstigmatizing, universalizing approach to alleviating suffering that positions social workers and clients as subject to the same, normally occurring processes of human behavior.

Keywords:

• Acceptance commitment therapy
• social work
• evidence based practice
• functional contextualism
• contextual behavioral science
• mindfulness
• cognitive behavioral therapy

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are members of the Social Work and ACT Special-Interest Group of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). We would like to thank Akihiko Masuda and Joanne Steinwachs for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript

Notes

¹ Functional contextualism and ACT are nested within a broader program of scientific development called contextual behavioral science (CBS; Hayes et al., 2012b), the aim of which is to create “a science more adequate to the human condition” (p. 2) by closely linking philosophy, theory, basic research, and treatment development and dissemination. For in-depth discussions of CBS, see Hayes et al. (2012a, 2012b). For a discussion of the fit between CBS and social work, see Steinwachs and Boone (2014).

² This analogy is adapted from a similar analogy in Hayes (2008).