Comparison of the Effectiveness of Kendall's Coping Cat Group Program and Parent Management Training on Anxiety and Resilience of Elementary School Students

Anxiety disorders are common childhood disorders that have a low rate of spontaneous recovery and high comorbidity with other disorders. Resilience protects the developent process from psychological damage and makes people use more effective coping styles when faced with psychological pressures. This research aimed to compare the effectiveness of the Coping Cat Program and Parent Management Training on the level of anxiety and resilience of Students with anxiety disorders.

This was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design, follow-up with two experimental groups, and one control group. The statistical population included primary school students with anxiety disorders in the city of Mobarakeh in the academic year 2021-2022. In this research, 45 elementary school students with anxiety disorders were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The students of experimental group 1 participated in ten 60-minute sessions of the Coping Cat Program, and the mothers of experimental group 2 participated in ten 75-minute sessions of Parent Management Training. The groups responded to anxiety (Spence, 1997) and resilience (Merrell, 2010) questionnaires before the intervention, immediately after the intervention, and also after 45 days for follow-up. A mixed variance analysis was used to analyze the data.

The results of mixed variance analysis showed that the Coping Cat Program and Parent Management Training had a significant effect on reducing anxiety and increasing resilience (p<0.001). The effectiveness of the Coping Cat Program in reducing anxiety is greater than that of the Parent Management Training (P<0.01). There is no significant difference between the two programs in increasing resilience.

Coping Cat Program and Parent Management Training are suitable methods to reduce anxiety and increase students' resilience, and these models are suggested for the development of mental health.