Authors

• Vahid Farnia ¹
• Faezeh Tatari ¹
• Safora Salemi ¹
• Ashraf Kazemi ²
• Mostafa Alikhani ¹
• Senobar Golshani ¹
• Sara Hokari ¹

¹ Substance Abuse Prevention Research Center, Psychiatry Department, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran.

² Reproductive Health Department, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Isfahan University of Medical Science Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

 
One of the most important and destructive forms of child abuse is the physical abuse which can lead to the maladjustment among abused children; the aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of trauma focused cognitive-behavioral therapy on reduction social and emotional maladjustment of physically abused children.
Materials and Methods
This study was a randomized controlled clinical trial. A number of 40 abused boys, who study in the elementary schools in Kermanshah- Iran, were selected by random cluster method, and randomly divided in intervention and control groups.Before and after Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF.CBT), the Sinha and Singh adjustment questionnaire were used to assess the level of social and emotional maladjustment.  In the intervention group, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy was held in ten one-hour sessions.
Results
The results showed that after the intervention, the mean of social and emotional maladjustment was decreased significantly in the intervention group (P <0.001), while in the control group the mean of social and emotional maladjustment were not significantly different between pre-test and post-test.
Conclusion
At current study, results showed that TF.CBT reduced the social and emotional maladjustment among physically abused children.

Keywords

• Child abuse
• Cognition
• Emotional maladjustment
• Social maladjustment