The Effect of Narrative Therapy on School Anxiety in Female Primary Students

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Anxiety problems are common disorders in children that can cause many other disorders in later ages. Many children with anxiety disorders in childhood and adolescence also have many adjustment problems. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of narrative therapy on school anxiety of female primary students. Method: This was a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test. The statistical population of the study included all female students of primary school (7-11 years) in Isfahan in the academic year 2015-2016. Sample size included 30 female students who were selected by multistage random sampling method. Phillips (1987) anxiety test was used to measure the level of anxiety of the subjects. The experimental group received eleven one-hour storytelling sessions and the control group received no intervention. Both experimental and control groups were re-evaluated in post-test and data were analyzed by covariance analysis. Results: The results showed that narrative therapy had a significant effect on school anxiety in female primary students and there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. That is, the mean scores of the experimental group in the post-test compared to the control group were significantly lower in terms of school anxiety (F= 12/03, P = 0.003). Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that narrative therapy enables students to identify their positive and negative emotions and thus reduce their anxiety, so it is recommended to use this approach along with other methods of anxiety treatment to reduce school anxiety in female primary school students.