Comparison of the effectiveness of combination of acceptance and commitment therapy with theraplay and acceptance and commitment therapy on quality of life in depressed children

Depression affects many aspects of a child's life, and children's playing is one of the conditions in which children's behavior can be better understood, as well as improving their cognitive commitment to the child's behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare of effectiveness of combination of acceptance and commitment therapy with theraplay and acceptance and commitment therapy on quality of life in depressed children.

The research method was semi-experimental with pretest, posttest and follow-up. The statistical population of this study consisted of all children with depressive disorder aged 8-12 years old in Isfahan city with their mothers in 2019. 45 people were selected by available method and randomly assigned to three groups of 15 people. For the first experimental group, the acceptance and commitment-based therapy protocol of Hayes et al in 10 sessions and 60 minute, For the second experimental group, the combined of acceptance and commitment therapy with theraplay protocol researcher-made in 10 sessions 60 minute were used and no intervention was made for the control group. The instrument used was the Child Quality of Life Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using repeated measurement analysis with spss18 software.

Results showed that combination of acceptance and commitment therapy with theraplay and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy were effective on depressive symptoms in depressed children [p≤0.001], which has increased the quality of life in terms of physical performance, emotional performance, social performance, academic performance and overall quality of life. But combination of acceptance and commitment therapy with theraplay is better [p≤0.001].

The Results of this study can provide practical implications for improving physical, emotional, social and educational performance in order to improve the quality of life of depressed children to therapists using a combined method of combination of acceptance and commitment therapy with theraplay.