The effectiveness of Sandplay Therapy versus Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: a comparative study

• Autor(a) principal: MATTA, Reinalda Melo da
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: RAMOS, Denise Gimenez
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.puc-campinas.edu.br/estpsi/article/view/10070
• topic: Cognitive behavioral therapy; Domestic violence; Sandplay therapy; Short term psychotherapy; Terapia cognitivo comportamental; Violência doméstica; Terapia do Sandplay; Terapia breve

ObjectiveThis study was designed to compare the effectiveness of Sandplay Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in the reduction of clinical/borderline symptoms in children and adolescents.MethodsThe participants were 21 victims of domestic violence with clinical or borderline scores on the Child Behavior Checklist and Young Self Report. They were also tested with Wechsler Abbreviated Intelligence Scale (T0) and designed by random to treatment and control groups. They were tested with the same instruments at T1 (after 20 sessions/ 20 weeks) and T2 (after 6 months).ResultsFor the children, there were no changes across the groups, but a significant improvement in internalizing behavior problems in the sandplay group and in externalizing and total behavior problems in the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy group. For the adolescents, there was a significant improvement in externalizing behavioral problems in the sandplay group and in the total behavior problems for the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy group.ConclusionThe results of this research do not allow to conclude that one technique is better than another since we did not have a consistent significative difference across the groups. These results may be due to the different approaches of the techniques. While Sandplay Therapy provides a free and protected space to allow the participants to express their feelings through images and histories, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy follows a program that focuses more on promoting behavior adaption to outside world. The application of this research design with a large population and with more sessions will allow to observe the consistence of these findings, providing a more solid ground to choose which technique would be more efficient for each specific case.