Introduction: Helping abused children, to enable them to achieve post-traumatic growth, is of great importance. It is possible to help this group of children using psychotherapy to enable them to experience positive psychological components. On this basis, the current article aimed at examining the effectiveness of trauma-focused behavioral methodology on post-traumatic growth among abused children.

Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study conducted on 2 control and intervention groups with pre- and post-design, in which 26 abused children referred to Ahvaz Welfare Organization in 2017 were selected using the accessible sampling method. The participants were randomly categorized to 2 groups, including intervention and control. For the intervention group, trauma-focused behavioral methodology was performed during 10 weekly sessions. The data were collected using Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory devised by Kilmer et al., and then analyzed using independent and pair-wise t test at a significance level of 0.05%.

Results: Following the trauma-focused behavioral methodology, the post-traumatic growth in the intervention group increased from 6.76 ± 2.24 to 17.23 ± 3.49, indicating significant post-traumatic growth in this group (P < 0.003). In contrast, in the control, this value was not significantly different before and following the intervention, i.e. it increased from 7.30 ± 1.93 to 9.30 ± 1.93 (P > 0.06).

Conclusions: The current research indicated that trauma-based behavioral methodology could increase post-traumatic growth among abused children.