The Effect of Parent-child Interaction Therapy on Separation Anxiety in 3-6-Year-old Children of Nurses

Separation anxiety disorder is considered as the most common anxiety disorder in childhood. Failure to treat this disorder in early age can be converted into a risk factor for childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of parent-child interaction therapy on reducing the symptoms of separation anxiety disorder among the nurses' children aged between 3 and 6 years old working in educational hospitals in Qazvin.

The intervention was designed as pre- and post-test along with the control group. The sample included 67 children aged 3 - 6 years' old who were divided into intervention and control groups using the blocking method. The intervention consists of three steps: child directed interaction, bravery directed interaction and parent directed interaction which was performed for 8 sessions per weak. No intervention was performed for the control group. The obtained data were collected using the Spence questionnaire (parents' version) and the results were evaluated.

Intervention therapy significantly reduced the symptoms of separation anxiety in the intervention group at the post-test stage compared to the control group. The mean of separation anxiety decreased from 10.82 ± 0.62 to 7.69 ± 0.52 in the intervention group.

Parent-child interaction therapy can be used as an effective treatment plan to reduce the symptoms of separation anxiety disorder among preschool children.