The Effectiveness of Classical Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Behavioral Adaptation, Anxiety and Dental Fear of children

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of classical cognitive behavioral therapy on children's behavioral adaptation, anxiety and fear of dentistry.

This research was in terms of practical purpose and in terms of research design, it was a semi-experimental type of pre-test and post-test with a control group. The statistical population of this research was made up of all children aged 7-11 who referred to the dental clinic during 2019 and were suffering from fear and anxiety. 30 children were selected from among the referring children in the available way and were randomly divided into two experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. So that the experimental group received cognitive behavioral therapy for 10 sessions of 90 minutes once a week for 3 months; While the control group did not receive training. To collect data, children's fear questionnaire- dental sub-index, dental anxiety questionnaire and behavioral adaptation scale were used. Data analysis was done with the statistical method of multivariate covariance analysis.

The results of the research showed that there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of the variables of behavioral adaptation, dental anxiety and fear of children (P<0.01).

In fact, cognitive-behavioral therapy causes fear and anxiety and increases children's behavioral adaptation in dentistry.