Background: Stuttering is a speech deficit which is characterized by obstruction of speech eloquence and verbal expression in addition to involuntary flow of air during communication. School children with communication deficit often experience social anxiety in their immediate environment. Currently, reports show that a good number of children with communication deficits are prone to social maladjustment due to their being socially inept. And this has significantly affected their thought pattern, social behaviours and emotional responses. In view of this, we examined the impact of cognitive behavioural play therapy in reducing social anxiety among school children with stuttering. Method: This is a pretest-posttest randomized control group design. Participants were 178schoolchildren in inclusive schools in South east Nigeria. Participants in the intervention group were treated using cognitive behavioural play therapy programme (CBPT). Participants in the waitlist control group were only assessed at three points of assessment. Data analyses were completed using repeated measures ANOVA. Results: The results show that cognitive behavioural play therapy is beneficial in decreasing schoolchildren's social anxiety scores. The intervention equally showed the considerable impacts on the children when exposed to cognitive behavioural play programme at different times of assessment compared to waitlisted control group. Conclusion: It is concluded that CBPT is a long-term psychotherapeutic programme that has significant impacts in reducing social anxiety among children with stuttering. This study makes a leading contribution on the limited scholarship focusing on the impact of CBPT on social anxiety of special population with stuttering deficits in developing countries.

Background: Most Christian parents living with children with low vision have reported to be experiencing psychological disturbances that are affecting the family health. As a result, the quality of family life is being impaired. The experience of parents catering for children with low vision is mainly influenced by psychosocial factors that could determine the quality of family life of such parents. This present study is to investigate the efficacy of rational emotive family health therapy in reducing poor quality of family life among Christian parents of children with low vision in Nsukka Catholic Dioceses. Method: This is a randomized pretest and posttest control trial. Participants were 88 parents of children living with low vision in Nsukka Catholic Dioceses, Nigeria. The power of the sample size was determined using Gpower statistical software. The participants in rational emotive family health therapy programme-group were exposed to a 12-session treatment programme whereas their counterparts in waitlisted control group did not receive anything. A family quality of life scale was utilized in assessing the participants. Data analyses were performed using repeated measures ANOVA. Results: It was found that rational emotive family health therapy had a significant positive effect on increasing quality of family life among the study participants compared to those in the waitlisted control group. Conclusion: This study contributed and validated the efficacy of rational emotive family health therapy in improving quality of family life among parents of children with low vision.

Background: The need to investigate depression among disadvantaged groups motivated this study. This study investigated the impacts of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) on depressive symptoms in schoolchildren with atypical behaviors in Enugu State Nigeria.Method: A group randomized controlled design was used to assign 37 schoolchildren to the intervention group and 37 schoolchildren to the waitlisted control group. These people were evaluated at three times (pretest, post-test, and later test) using a dependent measure. The outcome demonstrated that there was no discernible difference between the participants in the treatment group and those in the waitlisted control group at the time of the pretest. The post-treatment test results revealed a considerable improvement among participants as a result of REBT therapy.Results: The later test result revealed that the treatment's significant improvement was maintained in favor of the REBT group. The outcome of REBT treatment was not moderated due to location. The data showed a significant interaction impact on participants' depression levels in relation to the interaction between groups and gender during therapy. Conclusion:Following the outcomes, we concluded that REBT is a long-term efficacious intervention for treating depressive symptoms in schoolchildren with atypical behaviors in Enugu State Nigeria regardless of location and gender.Abbreviations: n = number of participants, REBT = rational emotive behavior therapy, sig = associated probability, χ 2 = chisquare, η 2 p = partial eta square.

It is important to investigate children's eating habits based on different eating behaviors such as satiety responsiveness (SR), slowness in eating (SE), food fussiness (FF), food responsiveness (FR), enjoyment of food (EF), desire to drink (DD), emotional under-eating (EUE), and emotional over-eating (EOE). The main objective of this research was to investigate whether gender affects the eating habits of Nigerian school children. A cross-sectional survey was conducted between March and June 2019. A total of 120 parents of school children participated in the study. The Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) was used to collect data. The CEBQ is composed of 35 items and eight subscales. Based on the analysis of parents’ reports, DD was higher in boys than girls, t (118) = 7.086, P < .001; EOE was higher in boys than girls, t (118) = 5.184, P < .001; EF was higher in boys than girls, t (118) = 2.183, P < .001; FF was higher in boys than girls, t (118) = 9.441, P < .001; and SR was higher in boys than girls, t (118) = 7.323, P < .001. However, EUE was lower in boys than girls, t (118) = −4.339, P < .001; FR was lower in boys than girls, t (118) = −3.112, P < .001; SE was lower in boys than girls, t (118) = −3.832, P < .001; thus, gender had a significant influence on eating habits of the school children. Gender significantly affects the eating habits of Nigerian school children. Thus, gender is an important factor to be considered when aiming to improve the eating habits of Nigerian school children.

This study determined the effects of mother-child mediated learning (MCML) strategies on the psychological resilience (PR) and cognitive modifiability (CM) of children with learning disabilities (LD) using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The study utilized a sample of 60 mothers and 60 children with LD. These children were both male (63%) and female (37%) primary five level children diagnosed with LD and were sampled from inclusive primary schools in Enugu State, Nigeria. The mean age and standard deviation of the children was 10.5 ± 1.04 years. Data collected were analyzed using a SEM approach. The findings of the study showed that (a) the causal model for the explanation of the effects of MCML on the PR and CM of pupils with LD significantly fitted in the observed causal model and (b) MCML had a significant effect on the PR as well as CM of children with LD. One implication of this study is that the PR, as well as the CM of children with LD, can be enhanced through MCML.