Developing a Treatment Package based on Parent-Child Interaction and Evaluating its Effects on School Anxiety in Female Students

Family is a network of relationships where parents and children interact in a mutual communication. The motherchr('39')s reactions greatly influence their child; the behaviors and moods of children could also significantly affect the behavior of parents towards children. An essential component in children–focused treatment is to improve parents–children relationship. For this purpose, conflicts between parents and children are reduced, their interaction process is facilitated, and problem–solving skills are thought to them. The parents’ interaction with their children could affect several psychological factors, such as school anxiety and school phobia in children. Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders in children; parents could majorly influence the aggravation or improvement of these disorders in children. School phobia is also a type of anxiety disorders in children, i.e., characterized by severe fear of going to school. Children with this disorder have a vague fear and concern about the possibility of an accident or disaster and often complain of physical illnesses, such as headaches, abdominal pains, and nausea. Anxiety disorders critically impact students, their educational performance, and quality of life. Thus, the current study aimed to develop a treatment package based on parent–child interaction and explore its effectiveness on school anxiety and school phobia among female students in fifth grade of primary school.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population of this study consisted of all female students studying in the fifth grade of primary school in the academic year of 2017–2018 in Sirjan City, Iran (N=2750 girls). The study samples were selected among the clients referring to the counseling centers and clinics, who were diagnosed with anxiety. Of them, 30 individuals were selected by purposive sampling method as the study samples and were randomly assigned into the intervention (n=15) and control (n=15) groups. To collect the required data, the School Anxiety Inventory of Lyneham et al. (2008) and Child Anxiety Related Disorders of Birmaher (2008) were employed. The basis of the treatment based on parent–child interaction used in this research was derived from the framework of the therapeutic principles of the parent–child interaction presented by various relevant studies. The treatment program was held for fourteen 60–minute sessions (one session per week). To analyze the research findings, repeated–measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at the significance level of 0.05.

The repeated–measures ANOVA results concerning school anxiety suggested that the effect of independent variable in the experimental group was significant (F=352.02, p<0.001). Additionally, the repeated–measures ANOVA data regarding school phobia revealed that the independent variable effect in the experimental group was significant (F=329.00, p<0.001).

In general, the advantages of this treatment in reducing school anxiety and school phobia in children were as follows: providing more intimacy between the studied parents and their children through playing games; the process of teamwork governing the program and parental support on mutual teaching; encouraging the therapist to establish a strong relationship between parent and child; the reflection of their feeling and emotions, and providing feedback by performing homework assignments at home.