The effectiveness of group trauma management therapy on the reduction of traumatic bereavement symptoms in bereaved female senior high school students

One of the important issues that bereaved students are faced with is the symptoms that they experience after the death of their loved one. Consequently, this can reduce their performance in various aspects of life, including education. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of group trauma management therapy (GTMT) in reducing the traumatic bereavement symptoms of bereaved female students. This study was an experimental research with pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population of the present study included all the bereaved senior high school female students of Iranshahr in the school year of 2016-2017. Forty subjects were selected among the whole population using the simple random sampling method. After conducting a clinical interview, to confirm the symptoms of bereavement, the selected individuals were randomly assigned to two experimental group (n=20) and control group (n=20). The Hogan Grief Reaction Checklist (HGRC) was used to collect the data. To analyze the obtained data, the descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) tests were applied using SPSS software. The results indicated the effectiveness of trauma management therapy (TMT) in decreasing despair (P<0.001), panic (P<0.001), anger and blame (P<0.001), detachment (P<0.001), disorganization (P<0.001), and personal growth (P<0.001). Considering the effect of GTMT on the reduction of traumatic bereavement symptoms among bereaved students, this method can be used as an effective treatment for relieving and reducing the traumatic bereavement symptoms.