The Comparison of Efficacy of Empathy and Anger Management Trainings on Social Cognition and Symptoms of Students with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Background and Oppositional defiant disorder is one of the most common, disruptive behavioral disorders. The aim of this study was the comparision of effecacy of empathy and anger management trainings on social cognition and disorder’ symptoms in students with oppositional defiant disorder.
The method of research was experimental and research design was pretest- posttest with control group. 54 students among all of seventh and eighth grades with oppositional defiant disorder in 2014-2015 academic years in Sari, were selected by multi-stage cluster random sampling and were assigned in 3 groups (2 experimental groups and 1 control group) ramdomlly. For data collection, oppositional defiant disorder rating scale for children (Homerson et al., 2006), the structured clinical interview (First et al., 1999), and social stories (Tur-Kaspa & Brayran, 1994) were used. For experimental groups, empathy traning and anger management trainings were implemented at 8 weekly sessions in 60 minutes whereas control group has any training.
The results of multivariate and univariate analysis of covariance showed the effectiveness of empathy training and anger management training on total score of social cognition and its components. The Adjusted mean values ​​of anger management and empathy training sowed that empathy training Rather than anger management has more role in improving social cognition of second and fifth stages (P Use empathy and anger management trainings alongside academic learning courses for children with oppositional defiant disorder, could prevent the occurrence, intensify and becoming oppositional defiant disorder to other disorders.