Effectiveness of Adlerian Play Therapy on Reduction of Social Anxiety and Maladaptive Perfectionism in Children with Stuttering

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of Adlerian play therapy on reduction of social anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism in children with stuttering.

The present study is quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical population included all children aged 8 to 12 years with stuttering referred to the speech-therapy clinics of Shiraz City in the academic year 2018-2019. The sample consisted of 24 children with stuttering who had social anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism in the clinical boundaries. They were selected and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale for Children (2003) and Frost, R. O. Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (1990) were used to collect data, which were administered as both the pretest and posttest. The content of sessions was provided according to Adlerian Play Therapy. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) method.

The ANCOVA results indicated that the mean scores on social anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism and its components in the experimental groups decreased significantly in comparison with the control groups.

Thus, it can be concluded that Adlerian Play Therapy was effective in reducing social anxiety and maladaptive perfectionism in children with Stuttering.