Nazari Amir Mohamad, Sarmadi Sogand, Ghazanfari Mohammad Javad, Gholami Mostafa, Emami Zeydi Amir, Zare-Kaseb Akbar
Student Research Committee, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Nursing and Midwifery Care Research Center, Health Management Research Institute, Iran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran.
Support Care Cancer. 2025 Jan 10;33(2):88. doi: 10.1007/s00520-024-09144-4.
The presence of cancer and its treatment will induce anxiety and various effects, not only on a physical level but also on a psychological level. Play therapy can be used by children to articulate their emotions and foster proficient communication with healthcare professionals and caregivers. Play therapy emerges as a highly effective method for the management of illness in children diagnosed with cancer.
A thorough search was conducted across multiple databases including PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Cochrane Library. Our review included only interventional studies published from inception to 1 March 2024 that investigated the impact of play therapy on depression and anxiety in hospitalized children with cancer. For each study, information was gathered regarding the study's objective, participant characteristics, conditions, intervention details, comparisons made, study duration, and outcome measures.
Following the retrieval of 2158 records, 12 studies were found to meet the eligibility criteria and were thus selected to include in the synthesis. Play therapy has been explored in several studies using interventions like cognitive-behavioral-based play therapy, family-based play therapy, group-based play therapy, virtual reality-based play therapy, and play therapy combined with other therapeutic approaches. Specifically, six studies investigated the effects of play therapy on anxiety, two studies on depression, and four studies on anxiety and depression.
Play therapy is highly recommended due to its simplicity, minimal requirement of tools and materials, ease of implementation, affordability, and suitability for hospitalized preschool and school-age children with cancer.
癌症的存在及其治疗不仅会在身体层面，还会在心理层面引发焦虑及各种影响。儿童可以通过游戏疗法来表达自己的情绪，并促进与医护人员和照顾者的有效沟通。游戏疗法已成为治疗确诊患有癌症的儿童疾病的一种高效方法。
我们在多个数据库中进行了全面检索，包括PubMed、科学网、Scopus、谷歌学术和考克兰图书馆。我们的综述仅纳入了从开始到2024年3月1日发表的干预性研究，这些研究调查了游戏疗法对住院癌症儿童抑郁和焦虑的影响。对于每项研究，我们收集了有关研究目的、参与者特征、条件、干预细节、对照设置、研究持续时间和结局指标的信息。
在检索到的2158条记录中，有12项研究符合纳入标准，因此被选入综述。在多项研究中探索了游戏疗法，采用了基于认知行为的游戏疗法、基于家庭的游戏疗法、基于团体的游戏疗法、基于虚拟现实的游戏疗法以及与其他治疗方法相结合的游戏疗法等干预措施。具体而言，六项研究调查了游戏疗法对焦虑的影响，两项研究对抑郁的影响，四项研究对焦虑和抑郁的影响。
由于游戏疗法简单易行、所需工具和材料最少、易于实施、成本低廉且适用于住院的学龄前和学龄期癌症儿童，因此强烈推荐使用。
