The effect of group relaxation method on separation anxiety disorder students

Separation anxiety disorder usually happened, when the children has the experience or anticipate separation from their parents. Diagnosis of SAD in childhood is very important to protect child from an injury on mental health. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of group relaxation on reduction of SAD on children with separation anxiety disorder symptoms. For this purpose, the researchers used the quasi-experimental design pretest-posttest model with control group. A month after the intervention sessions, follow-up sessions were conducted. The statistical population consisted of all first grade girls with separation anxiety disorder in Semnan. The sample members consisted of 24 patients with purposive sampling method based on the fifth edition of the diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) were diagnosed with separation anxiety disorder, and after obtaining parental consent to participate in the meetings of the group relaxation were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Then, group Jacobson relaxation intervention in form of the game during 10 sessions were used for experimental group in order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics methods such as mean and standard deviation and for hypothesis experiment, the two-way ( ANOVA) (SPANOVA) test was used. Results showed that between the effect of relaxation therapy on decreasing symptoms of separation anxiety disorder elementary students there was significant differences between experimental and control groups, and reduction anxiety was more in the experimental group. According to the findings, it can be concluded that the group relaxation intervention in improving symptoms of separation anxiety in children is effective. Therefore, in order to deal with separation anxiety disorder in children is suggested.