ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1617548
This article is part of the Research TopicMental Health in Recreational and Elite SportsView all 25 articles
Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with Psychological Skills Training (PST): A Case Study
Provisionally accepted
- Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom
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This case study outlines the sport psychology service delivery provided to an 11-year-old competitive figure skater. The client reported performance anxiety, which hindered her training and performance at competition. The intervention delivered integrated core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with psychological skills training (PST) with the aim of reducing the client's performance anxiety. Little has been written about how ACT can be applied alongside PST. The case reports how ACT exercises aimed at defusing the client's unhelpful cognitions, focusing on valued living, committed action, and staying in the present moment were integrated into goal setting, imagery, performance profiling, and self-talk. Demonstrating the alignment between ACT and PST is crucial for practitioners to seamlessly integrate ACT into their practice. Reflections from the client and practitioner capture the evaluation of the service delivery.
Keywords: cbt, MST, performance, sport psychology, Psychotherapy, Youth
Received: 24 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wood and Turner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Samuel Wood, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom
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