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

Abstract

The main purpose of this research was studying the effectiveness of art therapy with sand play method on behavioral disorders, emotional problems, and communication skills of children. This research was done with a semi-experimental method, using a pretest and post-test with a control group. The sample of this study was all elementary school boys in the first urban area of Tehran city, which comprised of 12500 students. A multi-stage random cluster sampling method was used in 24 areas of Tehran. The information gathering tools were Rutter Questionnaire (Teacher Form) for measuring behavioral disorders, Ashbanah Questionnaire (teacher form) for measuring emotional problems, and SDQ (Teacher Form) for measuring children’s communication skills. These questionnaires were given to teachers for data collection. Thirty students were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (15 students for the experimental group and 15 for the control group). The presence of symptoms of behavioral disorder, emotional problems, communication skills, and aged 6-12 years were requirements to enter the experimental group. The experimental group were subjected to sand play therapy in 10 sessions of 30 minutes. No intervention was provided for the control group. The findings were analyzed using covariance analysis. The results showed that the mean score of behavioral disorder and emotional problems in the experimental group was lower than the control group after the sand play therapy. The mean score of communication skills in the experimental group was higher than the control group after the art therapy with sand play method.