Effectiveness of Group Positive Psychotherapy on social, emotional and educational adaptability of junior high school maladaptive boy students

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of group positive psychotherapy on compatibility of junior high school maladaptive boy students. A quasi-experimental method was used with a control group and a pre-test, a post-test and a Three-month follow-up. The statistical population consisted of 240 male students of the seventh, eighth and ninth grades studying during the academic year 2017-18 in Ayatollah Khamenei Junior High School located in City of Fariman in Khorasan Razavi province in north eastern Iran. Non random sampling was used as a first step when five high schools were selected with the highest reported rate of maladaptive students. From these, one high school was chosen at random and 50 students with high scores of maladaptation were selected and randomly allocated to the experimental and control groups. Finally, 17 people in the control group And 17 people remained in the experimental group. Data collection tools were as follows: questionnaire for adapting high school students of Sin and Song (2001) And the program of positive psychology (Moghayar- Moey, 2009, Berati's translation, 2012) which was conducted in 11 sessions of 60-minutes once a week. Data was analyzed using mixed variance analysis with repeated measures. results showed that Group Based Positive Psychotherapy had a significant effect on overall adaptation (F= 19.60, P= 0.01), educational adaptability (F= 8.04, P= 0.01), social adaptability (F= 7.55 P= 0.00) and emotional adaptability (F= 3.76, P= 0.05) and that this effect remained stable after the follow-up phase. Since positive psychotherapy, decreases students’ maladaptive behaviors by increasing satisfaction from others, recognizing their own abilities and also the ability of others and managing negative emotions, it can be used to reduce students' maladaptive problems in schools.