Compare the Effectiveness of Art therapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Play therapy on Preschool Children's Anxiety

The present study aims to compare the effectiveness of art therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy on preschool children's anxiety. The design of the study was a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test type with a control group. The statistical population of the study included all children aged 5-6 years who were referred to the Neday-e Aramesh-e Ravan Counseling Clinic in the 2nd district of Tehran from mid-October to mid-January 2022. A total of 45 children were randomly selected and placed in two experimental groups and one control group (n=15) Then, the children of the first and second experimental groups underwent art therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy for 10 and 12 sessions, respectively. To collect data, the parental form of the preschool anxiety scale (PAS) (Spence et al., 2001) was used. Data analysis was done by multivariate covariance analysis in SPSS-23 software. The results revealed that by controlling the effect of the pre-test, there is a significant difference between the average scores of the post-test in the three groups of art therapy, cognitive-behavioral play therapy, and the control group (P<0.001), but there is no significant difference between the effects of these two methods (P>0.05). Thus, it can be concluded that by using each of the intervention methods of art therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy, an important step was taken in reducing the negative consequences caused by anxiety in children.