Storytelling on Aggression and Academic Performance in children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Aim: Behavioral and emotional problems are the most common form of child psychiatric pathology. The aim of the present research is the effects of therapeutic storytelling on aggression and academic performance in children with oppositional defiant disorder. Method: This experimental study was a pretest-posttest with the control group, which consisted of 24 children with an oppositional defiant disorder based on a multi-stage sampling method was selected and randomly allocated to experimental (n=12) and control (n=12) groups. Storytelling intervention training provided for twelve weekly 45-minute sessions to participants in the study group. At the start of the study, after 12 weeks all participants were tested using the Aggression Questionnaire (AGQ). In addition to descriptive statistics, one-way (MANOVA) was used to analyze the results and all analyzes were carried out using SPSS-23 software. Result: Based on the MANOVA, therapeutic storytelling was significantly more effective than non-treatment in reducing aggression (p 0.05). Moreover, storytelling training was able to increase the Academic Performance among children with an oppositional defiant disorder, significantly (p 0.05). Conclusion: Consequently, we can determine that the practice of storytelling therapy seems to be a promising area of intervention, not only for decreasing aggression but also for enhancing academic performance among oppositional defiant disorder.