Background and Purpose: The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of maternal education using the Adlerian-Draicourts approach on anxiety symptoms in preschool children.
Method: The research design was a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test and follow-up with a control group. The research population included all mothers with preschool children in Sari city, and using convenience sampling, 20 mothers were selected according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the Adler-Dreikours educational program in 12 90-minute sessions, while the control group did not receive any intervention. The research instrument was the Spence Child Anxiety Scale Parent Form (SCAS-P) (2001), which was administered by mothers in three stages: pre-test, post-test, and follow-up over a period of two months. The data were analyzed using ANOVA with repeated measures and Bonferroni post hoc test using SPSS-22 software.
Results: The findings of the study showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of subcomponents of children's anxiety (including generalized anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, specific phobia, and separation anxiety) at the post-test and follow-up stages (P < 0.001), and this difference was stable over time (P <0.001).
Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that parent training using the Adler-Dreikours method reduced anxiety in preschool children, and its effects were stable in the follow-up phase for all variables except the obsessive-compulsive variable.