Comparing the Effectiveness of Play Therapy with the Role-Playing Approach and Kendall Therapy Program on the Fear of Children

Childhood fears are one of the most common childhood psychological problems that must be diagnosed and treated in time. The purpose of this research was to compare the effectiveness of play therapy and the Kendall therapy program on the fear of female children.

This research was conducted quasi-experimental with a pre-test, post-test and follow-up plan with a control group. The statistical population of this research included all girls suffering from fear in the first and second grade of elementary school in Isfahan city in 2021-2022. Using a multi-stage random sampling method, 45 people were selected and randomly assigned to three groups of play therapy, therapy program Kendall and the control group were divided. To collect data, Ollandik's children's fear questionnaire (1983) was used and to analyze the data, SPSS-24 software was used with repeated analysis of variance.

The results of the research showed that the overall score of the fear scale in both the game therapy group and the Kendall group decreased significantly in both the post-test and the follow-up phase (P<0.0001), but it seems that the game Treatment is more effective than Kendall's treatment in reducing children's fear.

It can be said that play therapy and Kendall therapy are effective psychotherapies to reduce the fears of female children. Therefore, in order to treat anxiety disorders in children and improve their mental health, mental health professionals can benefit from these treatments, especially play therapy.