Group Therapy

Group Psychotherapy

What is group psychotherapy?

Group psychotherapy is one of the methods of psychotherapy based on the presence of one or more therapists responsible for creating a therapeutic environment characterized by acceptance, safety, privacy and confidentiality for a group of individuals concerned with the desire to change their maladaptive behaviours, thoughts and feelings, taking into account the uniqueness and privacy of each person in the group. American Wellness Center in Dubai Healthcare City provides a safe environment for individuals to share their stories in groups.

Why is group psychotherapy appealing and what are the therapeutic factors?

• Universality: Members recognize that other members share similar feelings, thoughts and problems.
• Altruism: Members gain a boost to self-concept through extending help to other group members.
• Instillation of hope: Members recognize that other members’ success can be helpful and they develop optimism for their own improvement.
• Imparting information: Education or advice provided by the therapist or group members.
• Corrective recapitulation of primary family experience: Opportunity to re-enact critical family dynamics with group members in a corrective manner.
• Development of socializing techniques: The group provides members with an environment that fosters adaptive and effective communication.
• Imitative Behaviour: Members expand their personal knowledge and skills through the observation of Group members’ self-exploration, working through and personal development.
• Cohesiveness: Feelings of trust, belonging and togetherness experienced by the group members.
• Existential factors: Members accept responsibility for life decisions.
• Catharsis: Members release of strong feelings about past or present experiences.
• Interpersonal learning-input: Members gain personal insight about their interpersonal impact through feedback provided from other members.
• Self-understanding: Members gain insight into psychological motivation, underlying behaviours and emotional reactions.
• Catharsis: Ventilation of feelings such as anger, anxiety, sadness, guilt and shame lead to an emotional release which makes sense as experiences.Sharing this in a group reduces isolation and enables trust. Reliving of repressed and usually painful experiences and bringing it to consciousness with the idea to create better insight.
• Acceptance: Sense of being accepted in the group and experience of tolerance. Risks can be taken without disastrous effects or judgment.
• Consensual validation: Making a comparison between the own conceptualization and those of others with the chance of correction.
• Contagion: The process of emotions, expressed by somebody, stimulate the awareness of similar emotions in the observer.

Types of Therapy Groups

• According to setting:
  • Inpatient Group Therapy - for patients inside mental hospitals.
  • Outpatient Group Therapy - for patients outside mental hospitals.
• According to size:
  • Small groups: A small group requires a minimum of three members and the upper  range of a small group size is 15 – 20 members.
  • Medium sized groups: From 20 to 100 persons.
  • Large groups: more than 100 members. It is just for certain groups as professional training groups.
    
• According to Duration:
  • Short-term: less than 16 sessions.
  • Long-term: More than 16 sessions.
• According to patients’ diagnoses:
  • Homogenous therapy group: Members have same diagnosis.
  • Heterogeneous therapy group: Members have different diagnoses.
    
• According to the approach of the group:
  • Cognitive-behavioural group therapy(clickable link to CBT content)  helps people to identify and change patterns of negative thoughts and behaviours.
  • Interpersonal group therapy: helps people with several different mental health problems by addressing their personal relationships, including family, friends, and  colleagues. These group therapy sessions can often be broken into small groups to work on peer-to-peer relationships.
  • Psychoeducational group therapy: involves a group of people who are working on common problems. It's typically used when someone has experienced a significant life event and needs to process what happened.
  • Skill development group therapy: is designed to help people improve their skills in different fields. This kind of therapy uses the idea of learning through doing and teaching by example to achieve this goal.
  • Support group therapy: is an approach for treating groups of individuals with a diagnosis of a mental disorder such as anxiety, depression, addiction, and more. This kind of therapy includes peer-support groups to deal with the symptoms of the disorder and provides a sense of belonging.
    

Who can benefit from group psychotherapy?

Everyone can benefit from group psychotherapy especially for those suffering from:

• Depression: mild to moderate degree.
• Anxiety:  mild to moderate degree of generalized anxiety disorder, panic Disorder and specific phobias.
• Poor communication skills and mild to moderate degree of social phobia.
• Low self-esteem and negative thoughts about self and life.
• Personality disorders: as borderline personality disorder.
• Adjustment disorders: with need to support.
• Eating disorders:  as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating.

Visit us at American Wellness Center based in Dubai Healthcare City or give us a call today!