Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy on Reducing Symptoms of Students with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

The present research was conducted to study the effect of cognitive behavioral play therapy on reducing symptoms of students in grade 3 in primary school with oppositional defiant disorder in Isfahan. This was an experimental research، and a pre-test، post-test، follow-up and control group design was applied. By using multistage cluster sampling، 30 third-grade students with oppositional defiant disorder were selected randomly and divided into control and experimental groups. In order to measure symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder of children''s، SNAP-IV Rating Scale was completed by parents. The experimental group received cognitive behavioral play therapy for 12 one-hour sessions. For statistical data analysis، variance analysis with repeated measures is used. Results indicated that there is a meaningful difference between the rate of symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder in both control and experimental group in post-test and follow up stages. Results of this research showed that play therapy is effective on reducing symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder in students and can be used as an effective intervention to eliminate or decrease oppositional defiant behaviors.