The Effect of Sandplay Therapy on Children's Anxiety Disorder

This study aimed at investigating the effect of sandplay therapy in reducing anxiety in elementary school children. The study was conducted in the form of an experimental pretest-posttest design with control group. The sample consisted of 40 elementary school girl students whose scores were one standard deviation above the mean on Spense anxiety questionnaire، and voluntarily participated in this experimental research. Participants were randomly selected and assigned to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent 10 sessions of sandplay therapy as the independent factor، and the control group received no treatment. Upon the completion of the treatment both groups were tested to determine the effect of the independent factor on the dependent factor which was anxiety disorder. The data was analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANCOVA). The Result revealed a significant relationship between sandplay therapy and reduction in anxiety. Sandplay therapy has some effects on reducing anxiety in children and also reducing the symptom of panic-agrophobia، separation anxiety، physical injury fears، social phobia، obsessive-compulsive factor and generalized anxiety. Working with a sand tray will probably give the children the opportunity to discover their phobias in a safe environment and make them real through the reproduction of the incidents، gain more knowledge about their problems، and find some solutions to different problems.