Attachment-Based Play Therapy for Iranian Children and Parenting 1Stress of Their Mothers

Abstract

Many children are exposed to traumatic experiences each year. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of attachment based play therapy on children with history of traumatic experiences and having developmental traumatic disorder (DTD) and parenting stress of their mothers. Fourteen children who were diagnosed as having DTD based on Vander Kolk criteria, were selected from child psychiatry clinics in Mashhad, Iran. Their parents permitted to be involved in this study. Patients were divided to 2 groups of intervention and control groups in waiting list. Mothers of all children completed Yule's scale and evaluation of children's stress parenting stress index-short form (PSI-SF) for evaluation of parents' stress. Ten sessions of play therapy were conducted for intervention groups. Then all mothers completed the tests again.Results revealed that there were not any significant differences in age, sex, grade of children and in the age and education of mothers in the 2 groups (P>0.05). Also, scores of Yule's scale, PSI-SF and parental distress at base- line did not have any significant differences in 2 groups (P=0.10, P=0.34 and P=0.58 respectively). After play therapy these tests in the intervention group were significantly different from the control group (P<0.001, P=0.01 and P=0.01 respectively). The differences in scores of difficult child subscale between 2 groups, before and after intervention were not significant (P=0.86, P=0.14 respectively). The differences in scores of malfunction in child-parent relation before and after treatment were significant in intervention group (P=0.01) but there were not meaningful differences in control group (P=0.52). It can be concluded that attachment based developmental play therapy reduced the stress of children and their mothers.