Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Research

Georg H. Eifert, Ph.D.

Dr. Eifert’s primary research has been the development of integrative behavioral models and treatments of anxiety disorders, particularly panic, specific phobias, and illness anxiety. Mostly together with his students, he has written over 100 publications such as research journal articles, book chapters, and books. Since coming to Chapman in 2002, Dr. Eifert’s research has focused on how new acceptance-based behavioral psychotherapy approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can be integrated with existing empirically supported behavioral interventions for anxiety, anger, and anorexia. After publishing a client workbooks on ACT for people with eating disorders (The Anirexia Workbook) and problem anger (ACT on Life not on Anger)  he wrote a treatment manual with Dr. John Forsyth (State University of New York at Albany) that outlines a unified acceptance-based treatment approach for persons suffering from anxiety disorders. This book, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders, was published in 2005 and followed by a book for ordinary people with excessive anxiety and worry entitled The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety. In collaboration with Dr. Michelle Craske at UCLA, Dr. Eifert has also beenexamining the ACT approach to the treatment of anxiety disorders in a large clinical effectiveness study in the UCLA Psychology Clinic.