Comparison of the effectiveness of philosophy program for children and group play therapy with cognitive-behavioral method on psychological flexibility in children with separation anxiety disorder

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two philosophy programs for children and group play therapy with cognitive-behavioral method on psychological flexibility in children with separation anxiety disorder. Research method; The quasi-experimental was pretest, posttest and follow-up with the control group..The statistical population was children aged 6 to 12 years referred to Shamim Counseling Center in Kermanshah in 2019-2020. The sample group consisted of 30 children with separation anxiety. The sample was selected by purposive sampling and random sampling First, separation anxiety questionnaire and Wisconsin card test was performed for all 3 groups (pre-test). Then, The participants of the first group received a philosophy program for children. And the second group received group play therapy while the control group did not receive educational intervention. Then, all 3 groups were re-evaluated with the mentioned questionnaires (post-test). The follow-up stage was held 2 months later. Data analysis was performed using multivariate analysis of covariance. Both philosophy program for children and group cognitive-behavioral play therapy have a significant effect on increasing psychological flexibility (p <0.05, F=1/031). Of course, in this study, the effectiveness of philosophy education program for children was more than play therapy.