Objective: To investigate the effects of play therapy on positive emotions of rural primary school
students in minority areas, and to provide a reference for whether play therapy can be promoted and used
in the mental health curriculum of rural primary schools. Methods: The “experimental group-control
group” pre-test and post-test experimental design was conducted in this study. A total of 200 students
were selected from grade 4, grade 5, and grade 6 in a rural school in a Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous
Prefecture in a certain province, and they were randomly assigned to the experimental group (n=100)
and the control group (n=100). The play therapy was used for the experimental group while that was not
used for the control group at the beginning and 5 weeks later, and the Positive Emotions and Negative
Emotions Scale was used at the beginning and 5 weeks later, respectively. SPSS17.0 was used to analyze
the results. Results: There were significant differences between the positive and negative emotions of the
experimental group before and after participating in the activity (p<0.01); the difference between the
positive and negative emotions of the control group was not significant (p>0.05). In the positive emotion
of the pre-test, there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group
(p>0.05); in the positive emotion of the post-test, the differences between the experimental group and
the control group were significant (p<0.01). Conclusion: Play therapy has a significant positive effect on
positive emotions of rural primary school students in minority areas.