Effectiveness of attachment-centered intervention to improve parent-child relationship and reduce symptoms of separation anxiety in 7-10 year-old children

Aim: Present study aim was to determine effectiveness of attachment-centered intervention on improving the relationship between mother-child and reducing the symptoms of separation anxiety in elementary school children. Research method was quasi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design, a control group and a two-month follow-up process. The target sample included 20 mothers from a 73-member population of male students referred to Robat Karim Education Counseling Center in the academic year of 2016-2017. After screening, 20 of the mothers of the students were selected who had obtained higher scores from the Separation Anxiety Assessment Scale–Child (SAAS -C)’ Hahn, Hajilian, Eisen, Winder, & Pincus (2003) and lower scores from the Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS)’ Pianta (1994) at the same time. They were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received attachment-based intervention package’ Ganbari, Khodapanahi, Mazaheri & Gholamali Lavasani (2013) on a weekly basis in eight 90-minute sessions. The data were analyzed using the mixed variance analysis with repeated measurements. The findings showed a significant difference between the performance of two experimental and control groups on the symptoms of separation anxiety (F= 18.86, P= 0.001) and parent/child relationship (F= 12.18, P= 0.003) at the post-test stage and after two months of follow-up. As the attachment-centered treatment provides effective and beneficial strategies for mothers, parents and children's psychiatric centers to improve the relationship between mother and child as well as treating separation anxiety problems in children with attachment problems, it can be considered as an effective treatment method.