Effectiveness of gratitude journaling in reducing stress level on children victims of domestic violence

Abstract

A Children who experience domestic violence are at risk for stress, depression, post-traumatic disorders, and difficulty adapting to everyday life. Overcoming stress in children is very necessary because children's way of thinking is immature and stress is too high can become a problem that endangers the condition individual mental and physical. Gratitude Journaling is an intervention method that leads individuals to write down things they are grateful for in themselves and in their lives. Gratitude Journaling helps shift the subject's focus to positive things about themselves and their lives. This positive process will lead to the accumulation of positive feelings and a sense of abundance as well as helps restore a positive mood after a stressful event. This study uses an intervention in the form of gratitude journaling with the research product in the form of a gratitude journal. This research was conducted using a quasi-experimental method with a One Group Pretest-Posttest design. Children's stress levels were measured using the adaptation of the Children's Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-C). The total subjects in this study were 5 children. The research was carried out on September 22-October 5, 2021. For each subject, there were 14 sessions of filling out the Gratitude Journal Book. Based on the results of hypothesis testing using the Wilcoxon test, there are significant results that p (0.043) < 0.05 and the number 5 a is obtained in the negative ranks which means that the five subjects with post-test scores are lower than the pre-test scores, so it can be said that there is a decrease in the subject's stress level score. In addition, the subject experienced a happier feeling and grew an attitude of gratitude. This study shows that Gratitude Journaling is effective in reducing the stress level of children who are victims of domestic violence in Malang City. It is hoped that children who are victims of domestic violence can practice gratitude journaling every day in order to reduce their stress levels. Future researchers are expected to involve more research subjects so that the results obtained are more representative.