Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objectives: One of the most important harms in conduct disorder is the failure in empathy and social and emotional mutual relations. Increasing empathy in children and adolescents with signs of conduct disorder can be one of the important educational and training goals in educational reform centers focusing on growth-oriented prevention. One of the best, evidence-based methods for increasing empathy in the age of technology is storytelling. When children and teenagers hear a story, they constantly connect the events and characters of the story with their experiences of the events. The process moves quickly in the story room, and almost every one of them remembers the same thing. In fact, by identifying negative thoughts and understanding how and why they affect his aggressive feelings, the story therapist helps the teenager to learn how to re-evaluate events and see them from a different and more positive angle. And replace the involuntary patterns and self-destructive thoughts with more logical and optimistic patterns, and this can change a person's behavior and type of feelings. In this regard the purpose of the present study was  study the effectiveness of purposive storytelling therapy on increasing empathy of adolescents with conduct disorder symptoms residing in reform and training centers.

Methods: The research method of  study according to the purpose was applied and to data collection was a semi-experimental pre- post test design with a control group. The statistical population included all male adolescent clients present at the Yazd reform and Training Center in 2019. 28 of them were selected in a purposeful sampling based on the entry criteria and were randomly divided into two groups experimental (n=14)  and control (n=14). The research tool was a questionnaire measuring emotional empathy (Mehrabian and Epstein, 1972). The experimental group underwent story therapy intervention for 12 sessions of 90 minutes. Univariate analysis of covariance was used in data analysis applied SPSS-26.

Results: The results showed that story therapy increases general empathy (p=0/041) and has had a significant effect on the components of empathy, including expressive empathy (p=0/020), participatory empathy (p=0/038), emotional stability (p=0/038), empathy towards others (p=0/048). Based on the findings of this research, story therapy can be used as one of the methods to restrain and control behavior, and by using the principles of education and practical training and also strengthening the presented the skills, you increased and improved the skill of empathy. The results showed that these trainings in the form of stories, especially in teenage years, can cause identification with the positive characters of the story, and increased self-confidence and self-efficacy of teenagers, and by providing the ability to understand others, it can lead to increasing the dimension of empathy skills. In other words, the results showed that the story therapy method was effective for increasing empathy in its different emotional, cognitive and behavioral dimensions, and it can be used as an intervention method to increase the empathy of teenagers living in reform and training centers. Considering that all the measures and executive programs of the reform and Training Center are organized in the direction of personal, mental and physical growth and excellence of the clients, so that they can train normal and law-abiding teenagers and prevent them from committing crimes again; It is obvious that all these positions find meaning and meaning in the context of developmental prevention.

Conclusion: Based on the findings of the research, it can be concluded that targeted story therapy has an effect on the empathy of adolescents with symptoms of behavior disorder residing in the reform and training center and increases empathy in these adolescents. stories have the ability to be used in teaching skills and increasing people's awareness. In story therapy, through identification with the characters of the story, a person can gain an initial raw awareness of the emotions, thoughts, and feelings of the story characters and become aware of these emotions, emotions, and thoughts in himself and then in others. When a person puts herself in the different positions of the heroes of a story,so can differentiate emotions and thoughts in itself and others,and achieve divergence from self-interview and increase empathy skills by providing the ability to understand others.