Given
the emphasis the specialists put on the necessity of mental health interventions for elementary school children as a
primary prevention, and also their focus on the treatment and development of
mental health, the present research aims to study the effectiveness of cognitiveـbehavioral social skills training on
reducing symptoms of students with externalizing
behavioral disorders.This was an experimental research with a
pre-test and post-test design, with a two-month follow-up period. The
statistical population included all female elementary school students with
externalizing behavior disorders studying at 5^th and 6^th
grades in Langarud city in the educational year 2012-2013. Using multi-stage
cluster sampling method, 30 subjects were selected and randomly assigned into
the two experiment and control groups. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was
used to evaluate the rate of externalizing behavioral disorders in students.
The Walker Social Skills
Curriculumwas presented in 17 sessions during two months to
the experiment group. The data were analyzed using repeated
measures/mixed-model ANOVA and the Bonferroni test. The results showed that
there was a significant difference between the rate of symptoms of externalizing
behavior disorders in both control and experiment groups during
post-test and follow-up stage. Moreover, social skill training with
cognitive-behavioral approach proved to be an effective intervention in
reducing the symptoms of externalizing behavior disorders