The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy on the Anxiety of Labor Children

Introduction: Child labor is a very serious problem in many major cities and capitals around world, especially in developing countries. These children are exposed to adverse health, physical, psychological, sexual, and social dangers because of their work and living conditions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral play therapy on the anxiety of labor children. Methods: The present research was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and a control group. The statistical population consisted of all students between eight to eleven years old of labor child schools; who were randomly selected from two schools of labor children in Tehran divided into two groups of control and experiment, fifteen children each. After performing the pretest, the experimental group received seventeen sessions (sixty minutes each) of therapeutic plays based on the cognitive-behavioral approach but the control group did not receive any treatments. Subsequently, in both experimental and control groups, the posttest was performed using Spence children′s anxiety scale(1997).  Results: At the start, the assumptions about the normalization and homogeneity of variables were evaluated. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test showed that all variables showed normally distributed.(P≤0.01) Also, Boxchr('39')s M test (Boxchr('39')s test for Equivalence of Covariance Matrices) confirmed the homogeneity of the variance-covariance assumption. So, assumptions of the MANCOVA test were confirmed and the MANCOVA test can be used for the analysis of data. The results of MANCOVA revealed posttest scores of experimental and control groups had a significant difference concerning the therapeutic playing method.(P≤0.01) It can be stated that according to the Eta2, forty-five percent of the remaining total variance was affected by therapeutic play therapy. Conclusions: Since cognitive-behavioral based play therapy was effective and helped children to controlled their anxiety level and enhance their learning, it is recommended that mentors, psychotherapists, and custodians of education, to provide labor child with easier access to a more flexible education system that facilitates and prevent them from entry to the labor market.