Group Psychotherapy

Group psychotherapy has played an important role in the treatment of mental illness and medical conditions since the 1940s. There are many different types of groups (e.g., psychodynamic, interactional, supportive, CBT, self-help) which treat a broad range of conditions in a variety of settings, including the recent exponential expansion of online groups due to COVID-19. However, it is very important for the group therapist to set realistic goals depending on the type of group being delivered and patient population being treated. Over 40 years of research has demonstrated that group therapy is effective for a wide variety of conditions and is equally effective as individual therapy. However, group therapy continues to be undervalued by patients, training programs, and treatment guidelines. There are unique properties in groups (e.g., universality, altruism, vicarious learning, interpersonal learning) that can be effectively leveraged in all types of group modalities to increase effectiveness when the group is being treated as an agent of change in its own right rather than just a setting for the delivery of psychotherapy interventions. Furthermore, the contemporary group therapist can be more effective through enhanced multicultural competence and maximizing the common factors in psychotherapy (i.e., empathy, positive regard, routine outcome monitoring, goal consensus, and collaboration). In addition, paying attention to cohesion and group process is an important part of the group therapist’s skill set. Future directions include increased research on online applications, delivering groups in low- and middle-income countries, treating comorbid conditions, integrating different models, and studying the impact of individual characteristics on outcomes beyond diagnosis.