Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy on Reforming the Social Maladjustment of Female Students with Intellectual Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral group play therapy on reformation of the social maladjustment on female students with intellectual disabilities (ID). The present study, is an experimental study design with pre-test and post-test, and with experimental and control groups. Population of this study includes all girls with mental retardation with ID (8-15 years), who attending in the special schools in the Kermanshah province. Among this population 32 students were selected as sample group. After evaluation, 20 people were diagnosed 2 Standard deviation higher than average deviation of Rutter test. These people were matched in two 10 groups, experimental and control groups. The experimental group received eleven sessions of cognitive-behavioral group play therapy and control group were placed in the waiting list. Research instruments were Rutter's behavior questionnaire. The analysis based on descriptive statistics, covariance analysis show that cognitive-behavioral group play therapy is caused to reduced social maladjustment with ID and to increased their social interactions. The most important results of this study are; effectiveness of group play therapy, usefulness of the cognitive - behavioral approach on reforming the social maladjustment and being equally useful results in play therapy for children with different IQ levels. It can be argued those cognitive-behavioral group play therapies can reform social maladjustment of female students with ID.