Play therapy can be an effective, integrative, and best practices intervention for work with children and families. Although play therapy is becoming a significant part of counselor education training programs, many real-world practitioners have not had training and cannot access continuing education. This lack of training access is particularly evident in rural settings. This brief study demonstrates that an intense play therapy workshop for rural mental health workers can have a significant impact on the knowledge and skills of the counseling professionals. Following a 2-day play therapy training session specifically designed for mental health professionals in rural areas, the levels of play therapy knowledge and skills showed statistically significant increases from pretraining to the end of the second day. The findings show that an intense play therapy workshop for rural mental health workers can have a significant impact on the knowledge and skills in play therapy.
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