Effectiveness of group psychodrama on aggression and social anxiety of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A randomized clinical trial

Abstract

Abstract This study aimed to determine the effects of psychodrama-based group therapy on reducing aggression, social anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in children. This clinical trial, with a pretest-posttest design and a two-month follow-up, involved 48 children (aged 8–12) at two hospitals in Iran. The participants were selected by available sampling and randomly divided into experimental and control groups (each 24 participants). Group psychodrama in sessions of 2\u2009h a week for 10 weeks was applied as an intervention for the experimental group, while the control group was assigned to a waiting list. The Child Behavior Checklist and Spence Children s Anxiety Scale were used for collecting the data. The mean and standard deviation were measured, and repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni correction tests were performed. We found that social anxiety, aggression, and ADHD symptoms significantly decreased in posttest in the psychodrama group, while there were no changes in these variables in the control group. Also, these results were persistent at the two-month follow-up. The present findings revealed that group psychodrama is effective in reducing aggression, social anxiety, and ADHD symptoms in children.