Losing a beloved person with whom one is deeply involved is like falling into an abyss of infinity leading to an undesirable feeling which in turn may cause mourning. The grief reactions differ from person to person depending on the circumstances of the occurred calamities, religious, social and cultural beliefs and in general the perceived meaning of the death for the bereaved. Adolescents are one of the vulnerable groups in facing the loss. Belongingness during adolescence is of an essence, as the adolescent seeks to shape ego identity in oneself. The grief process may nullify the personal assumptions regarding the world (spiritual assimilation), relations with others, and personal identity (inner world). Hence, it is indispensable to provide interventions for healing the wounds stemming from the loss. Among various approaches, play therapy is one of the best treatments for grief in the juveniles. Play therapy is the process of making conscious and verbalization of the unconscious and the nonverbal issues. Sand tray therapy is a sort of play therapy which provides people an opportunity to express themselves in a creative and nonverbal way. Currently this kind of therapy is considered as an effective method to work with children and adolescents. However, despite the high rate of mortality in Iran. there is not enough research conducted in this regard. In light of the great significance of cultural differences in the resolution of grief, it is essential to evaluate a variety of theories effective in resolving this process. on the other hand grief will change person‘s inner world, attitude, percept and the outer world. indeed dynamics of individual and social life survivors’ will be changed. Hence in this research will be studied Appraisal of effectiveness of sand tray Short term group therapy with grieving youth. For this purpose 20 person who had lost a close family member in the last two years were selected as the participations in the study through purposive sampling and then randomly placed in a control and an experimental group of 10 person each. first, as a pre- test, participation filled out the Grief Experience Inventory. The experimental group as intervention received 90minute twice in a week sand tray therapy sessions for six weeks. The control group was did not receive any intervention. All the test was again administrated on both groups upon termination of interventions. The data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistic and Mixed ANOVA. Results show that the mean values of experimental group on GEQ-34 and its subscales of search for somatic reaction, guilt feeling, and rejection feeling were reduced significantly on post test. So Sand Tray Short Term Group Therapy seem to be an effective and useful technique in reducing intensity of grief experience among adolescent; this is afforded through providing safe environment for modeling loss coping skills and making emotional catharsis possible.
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Jan 1, 2013
Open Access