The Effectiveness of Child Oriented Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment on Grief Symptoms and Emotional Expression in 7- to 11-Year-Old Children with Grief Experience

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD student, Department of Psychology, Shk.C., Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran.

2 Full Professor, Department of Psychology, Shk.C., Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran.

3 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Shk.C., Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran.

10.22038/mjms.2025.89936.5074

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of child oriented unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment on grief symptoms and emotional expression in 7- to 11-year-old children with grief experience. The current study was a experimental application with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group and a two-month follow-up period. The statistical population of the study included children aged 7 to 11 who had experienced grief and were studying in Isfahan during the 2024-2025 academic year. In this research, 36 children were selected by purposeful sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups (18 children in the experimental group and 18 children in the control group). The children in the experimental group received the unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment during ten weeks in ten 75-minute sessions. Children's Grief Questionnaire (CGQ), and Emotion Expression Scale for Children (EESC) were used in the present study. The data were analyzed through mixed ANOVA via SPSS23 software. The results showed that child oriented unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment has significant effect on the grief symptoms (p<0.0001) and emotional expression (p<0.0001) in children with grief experience. According to the findings of the study it can be concluded that unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment can be used as an efficient method to decrease grief symptoms and increase emotional expression in children with grief experience through identifying emotions, teaching emotional awareness, cognitive reevaluation, identifying emotion avoidance models and investigating behaviors resulting from emotions.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Medical Journal of Mashhad university of Medical Sciences
Volume 69, Issue 1
May 2026
Pages 29-41

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