The Effect of Art Therapy Based on Painting Therapy in Reducing Symptoms of Social Phobia in Elementary School Boys

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of art therapy based on painting therapy on 30 children recruited from elementary school boys with the symptom of social phobia who were 7-12 years old. This research is an experimental one with pretest and posttest and control group. In this prospective study a group of 30 elementary school boys with symptoms of social phobia were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. To find and select the main subjects, two steps were taken. At the first step, children obtaining scores higher than the cut-off point in the CHILD SYMPTOM INVENTORY-4 were selected, and at the second step and for the final selection, children were attended the Structured Diagnostic Interview based on criteria. The researcher adopted interview/observation and the document analysis for qualitative study and went through the painting therapy for 10 sessions twice per week, and each session lasted 45 minutes based on discussion and reviewing from parents and the teacher. An experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used in this regard. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as ANCOVA. Findings indicated that the experimental group did have a significant decrease in the symptoms of (SP) while the control group showed no significant difference.