Effectiveness of Play Therapy on Anxiety and Shyness inElementary School Students

Background: play therapy is a structured approach based on therapy theories that establishchildren’s learning and communication processes.objectives: the purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of play therapy onanxiety and shyness of elementary school children.materials & methods: this pre-test post-test with a control group design was conducted onstudents of both sexes studying at rezvan khutbehsarai elementary school in the academic year2020-2021, in talesh, north of iran. students who had a high score on anxiety and shyness testwere selected by purposive sampling method and then randomly allocated into experimentaland control groups. anxiety and shyness were assessed using spence children’s anxiety scaleand children’s shyness questionnaire. cognitive-behavioral play therapy intervention wasperformed during ten sessions. data were analyzed using analysis of covariance.results: play therapy significantly decreased the mean score of shyness and anxiety in theexperimental group. the adjusted post-test mean score of anxiety (52.13, sd= 3.775) and shyness(77.88, sd= 5.947) in the experimental group was significantly lower than the adjusted post-testmean score of anxiety (61.42, sd= 3.671) and shyness in the control group (94.11, sd= 4.332).conclusion: the finding showed effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy in reducinganxiety and shyness in elementary school students. parents should be motivated to learn conceptssuch as the need for play, types of games, and the role of play in repairing the parent-childrelationship.