Meta-analysis of Effective Treatments in Reducing Children's Anxiety

 Anxiety is one of the common disorders of childhood, in addition to drug treatments, psychological interventions and treatments have been used to reduce it. The present study was conducted with the aim of meta-analysis of effective treatments in reducing children's anxiety.

 In this meta-analysis, the statistical population includes available research related to non-pharmacological interventions for children's anxiety inside and outside of Iran, which were published in scientific databases from 2010 to 2020 (Google Scholar, Pub Med , since Direct, NCBI, Taylor & Francis Online, SID Magiran, ensani) have been published with the keywords of anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, social anxiety, specific phobia, child anxiety, generalized anxiety, cognitive-behavioral therapy, play Therapy, behavior therapy, story therapy, art therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness therapy were searched. According to the criteria for entering the research, out of 77 available studies, 65 studies were analyzed. The method of data analysis was the meta-analysis approach, which was done using CMA2 software.

 Meta-analysis was performed on the primary studies in eight treatment groups, which showed that the combined effect size obtained from the studies related to each treatment indicated the effectiveness of all the mentioned interventions on children's anxiety. Based on the combined effect size, the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapies (0.755), story therapy (0.655), attachment-based therapy (0.598), play therapy (0.575), cognitive behavioral therapy (0.569), child-parent interaction therapy (0.565), mindfulness (0.539) and art therapy (0.496) respectively had the greatest effect on reducing children's anxiety, which the results of the one-way analysis of variance test showed, this difference is not meaningful (P=0.355, F=65.7 1.132).

 The obtained effect size showed the effectiveness of the mentioned interventions in reducing children's anxiety, and considering the non-significance of the difference in the effectiveness of these treatments, all the mentioned treatments can be used alone in the treatment of children's anxiety.