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Abstract

Post-traumatic stress disorder is related to trauma and stressful factors. It occurs after being exposed to a terrible or difficult experience in which a person is threatened physically, mentally, and psychologically. The present study aims to investigate the effect of narrative exposure therapy on improving the emotion expression dimensions in children with post-traumatic stress disorder. The study method was quasi-experimental with a pretest and post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the study included all children with post-traumatic stress disorder who formed a medical record in the fall of 2019 in the social emergency and Red Crescent of Shahrekord city. Thirty children were selected by convenience random sampling. They were randomly allocated to experimental (15) and control (15) groups. To collect the data, the emotion expression questionnaire (King and Emmons, 1990) was used in the pretest and post-test stages. The experimental group received narrative exposure therapy for eight sessions, lasting 90 to 120 minutes. The control group did not receive any intervention. A covariance analysis test was used to analyze the data. The results revealed that narrative exposure therapy significantly reduced post-traumatic stress symptoms and improved the samples' emotional expression (p<0.01)‎.