The special conditions of autistic children are accompanied by the emergence of depression symptoms in their parents. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment group therapy on reducing depression in the mothers of autistic children. This research was conducted as quasi-experimental and its statistical population is all of the mothers of autistic children aged 3 to 6 years, who are the members of the Iranian Autism Society of Qods Branch, as 80 persons. The statistical sample size of the present research consisted of 30 individuals who were randomly categorized in two experimental and control groups (each 15 participants). Based on the Bond et al. (2011) model, the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Protocol was implemented as one session every week by the researcher for the experimental group. The second version of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) by Beck (1963) was used to collect information and statistical data. Mean, standard deviation and multivariate covariance, via SPSS-24 software, were used for data analysis. The results showed that there is a difference between posttest and follow-up depression scores of groups by controlling the pretest scores, and this hypothesis is significant at p<0.001 level. Therefore, the research hypothesis is confirmed.
