Effectiveness of Group Movie Therapy (GMT) on Reduction of Grief Experience Intensity in Bereaved Adolescent Girls

Objective: One of non-confrontative methods for treatment of difficult issues such as grief is movie therapy which is an advanced form of bibliotherapy. The present study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of Group movie therapy (GMT) on reduction of intensity of grief experience in bereaved adolescent girls. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and a follow up test along with a control group. 24 female university students in the city of Tehran aged 17-19 years who had lost a close family member in 2008-2009 were selected as the participants in the study through convenient sampling. They were then randomly assigned into a control and an experimental group of 12 persons each. The experimental group as an intervention received 90-minute weekly group movie therapy sessions for eight weeks. The intervention was comprised of watching the movie “Elina”, in one session followed by group discussions. Four subscales of GEQ indicating the intensity of grief experience was administrated on both groups as pretest-posttest and as follow up. Results: Mixed ANOVA showed that group movie therapy significantly decreased (p 0.001) the intensity of grief experience. Conclusion: GMT is an efficacious and enduring technique on the adolescents; this is afforded through providing insight, modeling loss coping skills, making emotional catharsis possible, and facilitating cognitive processing and accelerated learning in the participations.