Play and children’s mental health in the face of adversity

Abstract

My thesis examines the role of children’s play and mental health in adverse circumstances. In the review paper, I report the first meta- analysis of the effectiveness of therapeutic play to reduce anxiety prior to a medical procedure in 9 randomised control trials. Pre-operative play was associated with a large effect size (SMD = -0.97, 95% CI = -1.52 to -0.41) when compared to all
controls but subgroup analyses showed that pre-operative play was no more effective than an active control (SMD = -0.35, 95% CI = -1.42 to 0.73). In my empirical paper, I examined the relationships between play, physical activity and contact with nature and pre-schoolers mental health. I conducted a longitudinal study of these factors in 1028 UK pre-schoolers during the first 4 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I used mixed linear modelling and found that playing with
other children, physical activity and contact with nature were negatively associated with emotional symptom severity but time spent playing alone was positively associated with emotional symptom severity. Both my thesis studies have implications for clinical practice; although further research is warranted, play can contribute positively to children’s mental health in adverse circumstances.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Peter Lawrence: orcid.org/0000-0001-6181-433X

Catalogue record

Export record