Effectiveness of Play Therapy on Reducing Anxiety Level Among Hospitalized Pre-schoolers in Selected Hospitals, Bangalore

Abstract

Hospitalization itself is a source of anxiety, confusion and fear. Anxiety is more common in pre-school children and they cause many problems in later stage of life. Anxiety may affect learning, cognitive pattern and memory status of the children. Play helps to reduce anxiety of the child. Play therapy is an approach in providing assistance to overcoming problems using media such as toys, games and communication. Recent studies have indicated that the different play activities along with regular hospital care can help to reduce the anxiety level and cope-up with treatment and different painful procedure. So the investigator felt the need to conduct this study to assess effectiveness of play therapy on reducing anxiety level among hospitalized preschoolers at selected hospital, Bangalore. This study was aimed to analyse level of anxiety among the hospitalized pre-schoolers using pre-test and post-test scores to observe the effectiveness of play therapy. A convenient sampling method was adopted for this study using Modified Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, an experimental study with 60 samples. The results of the study shows that in pre-test majority 26(43.3%) of children had severe level of anxiety while the focus remains on post- test values 35 (53.4%) of children which revealed mild levels of anxiety with difference 9(10.1%). So the findings of the study depicts that children were anxious in the pre-test while there was a consistent reduction in the post-test scores with reduced anxiety in children. The mean score in the pre-test was 30.13 and 18.03 in the post test with difference of 12.1 with paired ‘t’ test value of 5.88 which was significant at 0.05 level. Hence a significant association found between level of anxiety and selected socio-demographic variables were at 0.05 level (p<0.05). In conclusion, the study findings clearly outlined that children’s anxiety levels among hospitalized preschoolers were minimized to certain extent by employing play therapy which was found to be an effective method.