Therapeutic Fairytales for Holistic Child Development: A Systematic Literature Review of Clinical, Educational, and Family-Based Practices.

Abstract

Therapeutic Fairytales can support child development, and many studies have recognized its benefits for children. However, no one has integrated storytellers as a holistic tool to support children's overall development, whether in a clinical, educational, or family-based practice context. Therefore, this study conducted a systematic literature review to effectively explain how story therapy can be used in clinical, educational, and family-based practice contexts to support children's holistic development. The study's novelty provides a new perspective on story therapy in child development with a systematic approach that highlights the unique contribution of a story as a therapeutic tool that supports mental health, educational aspects, and family dynamics. This systematic literature review follows the PRISMA guidelines to collect 33 articles indexed by the Scopus database identified and selected for review. The review identified two main themes in the context of clinical, educational, and family-based practice: various forms of story therapy utilization and types of child development. The research results show that Therapeutic Fairytales has various benefits in supporting children's holistic development, including emotional, cognitive, social, moral, and language development. This study implies that Therapeutic Fairytales becomes a more structured and integrated tool in child intervention programs in various fields, inspiring further research on its effectiveness in other contexts.