The effectiveness of play therapy on decreasing anxiety of elementary school students

Research showed that play therapy has improved behavioral disorders, but could play therapy also be effective for anxiety disorder in students?

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of play therapy on reducing anxiety in elementary school students.

The present study was a quasi-experimental  design with pretest-posttest with control group. The statistical population of the present study included all elementary second grade female students from SAMA schools in the city of Malayer (68 students). Among them, a sample of 30 students who had the highest  scores of anxiety on Kingery et al. (2009) child anxiety scale was selected and placed randomly into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received 10 sessions of play therapy(Mohammad-Esmaeil, 2010) intervention and no intervention was performed on the control group. The scores of screening test for  students’ anxiety were considered as pre-test, and after the intervention, the children anxiety test was readministered to both groups and its scores were considered as post-test. The data were analyzed by ANCOVA analysis and independent t-tests.

The results showed that play therapy had positive significant effects on reducing social anxiety, separation anxiety, and harm avoidance (p<0/05), whereas it had no significant effects on children’s physical symptoms (p>0/05).

Play therapy can be an effective treatment on anxiety disorder of elementary female students.