The effectiveness of art therapy with sand play method on behavioral disorders, emotional problems, and communication skills of children

Abstract

The main purpose of the present research is studying the effectiveness of art therapy with sand play method on behavioral disorders, emotional problems, and communication skills of children. This research had done with semi-experimental method by pretest-posttest plan with control group. The sample of this study was all elementary school boys in first urban area of Tehran city, which were 12500 students. Multi-stage random cluster sampling method used between 24 areas of Tehran to achieve the purpose. The information gathering tools were Rutter Questionnaire (Teacher Form) for measuring behavioral disorders, Ashbanah (teacher form) for measuring emotional problems, and SDQ (Teacher Form) for measuring children's communication skills which was given to teachers for data collection. Thirty students randomly divided into two experimental and control groups (15 students for experimental group and 15 for control group). The presence of symptoms of behavioral disorder, emotional problems, and communication skills, and the age range of 6-12 years were requirements for experimental group. The experimental group subjected to sand play therapy in 10 sessions of 30 minutes. No training provided for the control group. The findings analyzed using covariance analysis. The results showed that the mean score of behavioral disorder in the experimental group was lower than the control group after the sand play therapy. The emotional problems in the experimental group were lower than the control group after the sand play therapy. The mean of communication skills in the experimental group was more than the control group after the art therapy with sand play method.Â