Effect of Sandplay Therapy on Children Aged 7-14 Years with Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders

Objective To explore the curative effect of sandplay therapy on children aged 7-14 years with anxiety related emotional disorders(CARED).Methods In the study 20 children with CARED were randomly assigned to experiment group and control group.The experiment group underwent 8 times of sandplay as the intervention,which was conducted once a week and about 50 minutes every time,while the control group did not.The participants were asked to fill in some scales including the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders(SCARED)and Eysenck Personality Questionaire(EPQ)before and after the intervention so as to assess the children's anxiety emotions and personality structure.The differences between the both groups might be found through analyzing the results of these scales and thus the efficiency of the sandplay therapy could be assessed.Results After the intervention,the scores of the anxiety(Manxiety:17.30±4.47)and the emotional stability(MNscale:50.80±5.77)of the experiment group were significantly lower than those in the control group(Manxiety:34.30±4.47;MN scale:65.50±3.47 Pa=0).For the experiment group,the scores of the anxiety and the emotional stability before the intervention(Man-xiety:35.70±8.06;MNscale:68.70±7.51)were significantly higher than those after the intervention(Pa=0),while no significant diffe-rence between the scores of before(Manxiety:35.60±4.67;MNscale:67.10±4.72)and after intervention could be found in control group(P=0.096,0.078).Conclusion Sandplay therapy can effectively relieve the anxiety emotion of the children with CARED and therefore it can be used as one of the treatments of CARED.