The Effect of Play Education on Students' Emotional Regulation and Social Relationships

Background and Objectives: Promoting emotion regulation and social relationships has a key role in students' health and can affect their future success. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the effect of play-based education on students' emotional regulation and social relationships. Materials and Methods: This quasi-experimental, pre-test-post-test study, included all female students of the second and third grades of Zahedan city in the academic year 2021-2022. Thirty patients were selected by purposive sampling and randomly assigned to two groups of 15; experimental and control. The participants answered the Gross & John (2003) Social Relations Regulation Questionnaire, Barton et al. (2006). The experimental group participated in 12 play therapy sessions, but the control group did not receive any intervention. Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance. Results: The results showed that there was a significant difference between the control and experimental groups in post-test in terms of emotion regulation and students' social relationships (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Game education was effective in improving students 'emotional regulation and social relationships, so play therapy can be used to improve students' emotion regulation and social relationships.