The effect of positive psychotherapy in test anxiety among Zahedan students with hemophilia

Hemophilia is a chronic disease which due to several reasons, including frequent absences from school and reduced motivation, leads to the incident of test anxiety among patients. This study was conducted with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of positive psychotherapy in test anxiety among students with hemophilia. The current study followed a pretest, posttest, and two-month followup quasi-experimental design with an experimental group and a control group. This study had a statistical population including all senior elementary and junior high school students with hemophilia who had medical records in Zahedan Hemophilia Society. After screening them, 60 students were selected and randomly assigned to two 30-person groups of experimental and control. Since some patients refused to continue taking part in this study, the sample decreased to 57 people. Measurement tool used in this study was Sarason Test Anxiety Scale. Positive psychotherapy was held in 8 sessions (two 120-minute sessions per week) and a follow-up was conducted two months after completing the psychotherapy. Data were analyzed using a repeated measure analysis of variance. Results showed that positive psychotherapy significantly reduced test anxiety among the students with hemophilia. Moreover, the stability of the effects of this therapy in the follow-up was confirmed. The obtained results indicated that policymakers should pay a lot of attention to this new positive psychological training and its effects on reducing test anxiety.