Effectiveness of Gestalt Play Therapy in Decreasing Social Phobia

the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Gestalt play therapy in decreasing social phobia of fourth grade students. In order to select participants, two girls schools of the 2nd educational district of Tehran were se- lected by cluster random sampling method. Then, the teachers completed the social phobia items of the Child Symptom Inven- tory (CSI-4; Gadow, & Sparfkin, 1994). Based on teacher's reports, 12 students (M=11) were selected and assigned randomly to two equally experimental and control groups. The research design was pretest - posttest control group. The experimental group received 10 sessions of Gestalt play therapy (90 minutes a week) in groups. After 10th session, the teachers completed the social phobia items of the Child Symptom Inventory for both groups. Data were analyzed using covariance analyses. The results indi- cated that Gestalt play therapy was effective on decreasing the scores of the diagnosing and the severity factors of social phobia symptoms in the posttest phase.