Effect of group play therapy on depression in children with cancer

Children with cancer develop depression which can lead to several problems in the course of treatment. The aim of play therapy was to reduce depression and produce positive results in the health status of these children. This was an experimental study and included all 6-15 years old children with cancer in Mahak center in 2007. After calculating the depression score by means of Child Depression Scale-A (CDS-A), 24 patients who were depressed and had scores of more than 84, were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Play therapy was performed for seven 2-hour sessions for experimental group. The groups were assessed for depression again after one week. Data were introduced into SPSS software and analyzed by means of Manwitny-U and Wilcoxon, and Kruskal-Wallis tests. The results of this study showed that the mean values of depression scores in experimental and control groups were 95.21 and 91.75 before play therapy, and 74.33, and 94.08 after play therapy respectively, which was statistically significant (p= 0.002). The results indicated that play therapy led to significant improvement of depression and may be an effective intervention for children with cancer. Play therapy can be an effective intervention to help the hospitalized children in order to prepare them for painful therapeutic procedures and stress of hospitalization.