Effectiveness of Coping Cat Program in Children with Anxiety Symptoms

Abstract

The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of Brief Coping Cat Program in children with anxiety symptoms, in a group setting. It was hypothesized that there will be a significant difference in the level of anxiety symptoms in participants of experimental group, before and after receiving the Coping Cat Program Intervention and that participants subjected to Coping Cat Program will have an improvement in their symptoms of anxiety as compared to the control group. The study was experimental in nature, consisting of an experimental/intervention group, who received Coping Cat Program, and a waitlist control group. A total of 12 female participants, between ages of 8 to 11 and belonging to grade 3 to 5, were selected through purposive sampling from an orphanage from Karachi city, who were randomly divided into two groups, 6 in each group. First permission and consent on children’s behalf, was sought from the board members of the orphanage. After which children fluent in Urdu language and scoring a T-score of 60 and above (elevated anxiety symptoms) on Urdu translation (Rizwan, Mushtaq, & Shahab, 2012); unpublished manuscript, of Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS); (Spence, 1994) were selected for the study. A total of 14 sessions were held with the experimental group, with a frequency of two sessions per week. All participants were screened before and after the intervention, using the same measure to check the difference in anxiety levels of both groups. Structure of therapy sessions was based on the guidelines provided in ‘Brief Coping Cat: Therapist Manual for the 8-session Workbook (Kendall, Crawley, Benjamin, & Mauro, 2013)’. Results were statistically analyzed through Independent Sample t-test and Paired Sample t-test. Results showed a statistically significant difference between pre and post test scores of experimental group (/(5) = -10.867, p < 0.05), indicating towards a significant reduction in anxiety symptoms of participants after receiving Coping Cat Program, hence supporting first hypothesis, also results showed a statistically significant difference between post-test scores of the experimental and control group (f(10) = - 8.224, p < 0.05),