Abstract
Objective: Anxiety is one of the most common psychiatric disorders and almost 30% of the primary school children are affected by various kinds of it. Group play therapy has been reported to be a useful component of treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). The goal of this research was to determine the efficacy of this treatment in children with GAD.
Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 30 youths with GAD aged between 5 and 11 referred from Isfahan child psychiatric clinics were randomly assigned to two groups (15 patients in each group). Parents’ form of CSI-4 questionnaire, GAD subscale, was used to diagnose the problem of these children with the help of a child psychiatrist. Case group got 1-hour weekly sessions for three months while no intervention was done for control group (waiting list). Analysis of covariance was used to compare two groups.
Results: Analysis of covariance showed that group play therapy reduces GAD symptoms in posttest stage meaningfully (p=0.02). It also reduces GAD symptoms in follow up significantly (p<0.0001).
Conclusion: The results of this study shows that group play therapy can be an effective method for reducing GAD symptoms in posttest and follow up stage.
Declaration of Interest: None.
Citation: Karahmadi M, Jalali S. Effectiveness of group play therapy in generalized anxiety disorder of children. Iranian Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences 2011; 5(1): 33-6
Keywords
Fulltext
Full text is available in the PDF.
References
-
1.
References are available in the PDF.
Copyright
© 2011, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.