The Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy (CBT) and Resiliency Based Play Therapy on Sleep Disorder in Children with Functional Abdominal Pain

Children with functional abdominal pain often suffer from Abdominal pain before falling asleep. This study aimed to determine the effects of resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy on sleep disorder in children with functional abdominal pain.

The research method was quasi-experimental, with pre-test, post-test, and follow-up with a control group. The research participants consisted of 24 children with functional abdominal pain aged 5-10 years old with their mothers referred to Amin Hospital Specialized Clinic in Isfahan (2018), who were purposefully selected and randomly assigned to three groups (two therapeutic groups and a control group, each group with 8 children). Bruni et al. (1996) sleep disorder Scale was used to measure the dependent variable in the pre-test, post-test, and one month follow up. Two experimental groups received a treatment course on cognitive-behavioral play therapy and resiliency based play therapy in 8 sessions, and the control group did not receive any treatment. The data were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis of variance.

The results revealed that only there was a significant difference between re saliency-based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy with a control group in sleep (P < 0.05), there was no significant difference between resiliency based play therapy and cognitive-behavioral play therapy (P > 0.05).

Resiliency based play therapy and cognitive play therapy have been effective in recovering sleep disorder of children with functional abdominal pain. Therefore, this treatment can be used to improve sleep disorders in children with functional abdominal pain in health centers.