The Effectiveness of Resiliency and Cognitive-Behavioral(CBT) Based Play Therapy on Child/Mother Reported Pain in Children with Functional Abdominal Pain

Children with abdominal pain often require psychological complementary therapies, along with medical treatments, due to the combination of symptoms with psychological factors. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy on abdominal pain in children with functional abdominal pain. 

The current study was quasi-experimental research with a pretest, posttest, follow-up and a control group. The research participants consisted of twenty-four children with functional abdominal pain aged five to ten years old in the city of Isfahan, who were selected using the purposeful sampling method. They were randomly assigned to two therapeutic groups and a control group, each group with eight children. Walker et al abdominal pain questionnaire and child and mother report were used measuring the dependent variable in pretest, posttest and follow up. The first and second groups along with medical treatments they received a treatment course on resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy in eight sessions while except regular medical treatments the control group received none. The data were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis of variance. 

The results revealed that there was only a significant difference between resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy with the control group in abdominal pain in both forms of mother and child report. Child report F=8.91, mother report F=6.78, P <0.01. There was no significant difference P>0.05 between resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy.

Resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy has been effective in reducing the abdominal pain of children with functional abdominal pain. Therefore, these two types of treatment can be used to improve functional abdominal pain in children with this disorder at treatment centers.