The effect of group play therapy on social adjustment, control of anger, and loneliness of children between 11–12

One of the social problems of human societies is behavioral and psychological incompatibility and methods of dealing with them. Undoubtedly, the issue of addressing mental health issues, prevention, and treatment of behavioral disorders will become more salient day by day.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of group games on social adjustment, anger control, and loneliness.

The study employed a semi-quasi-experimental approach in the form of a pretest-posttest design. To this end, 40 male elementary school students in the first half of the academic year 2019-2020 in Kermanshah were selected based on the convenience sampling method and were randomly divided into experimental (n= 20) and control (n=20) groups. The instruments of the study included the Khanchi (1998) Adjustment Questionnaire, the Novako (1986) Anger Control Questionnaire, and Usher and the Wheeler (1985) Loneliness Feeling Scale.

The results of the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) confirmed that by controlling the pre-test scores in the experimental and control groups, group games can increase social adjustment and decrease feelings of loneliness. However, there was no significant difference in the anger control scores.

Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that group play therapy as a series of collective and motivational activities can enhance individual skills, self-confidence, social relationships, and individual independence thereby improving the child's social and emotional adaptation.