Psych · psychotherapy
Group psychotherapy
Also known as Group therapy · Group treatment · Process group · Interpersonal group psychotherapy · Cognitive behavioural group therapy · CBGT · DBT skills group · Therapeutic community groups · Multiperson psychotherapy
Exam-exhaustive fellowship reference on group psychotherapy — definition and formats, Yalom therapeutic factors, cohesion, selection and frame, leadership, disorder-specific evidence (depression, anxiety/SAD, PTSD, schizophrenia, BPD multiperson programmes), format equivalence vs individual therapy, crises and confidentiality limits, and CASC/MEQ technique. FRANZCP-primary, globally tagged.
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Red flags
- Placing actively manic, floridly paranoid, or high acute suicide-plan patients into unstructured process groups
- Promising absolute confidentiality when group members are present
- Running trauma exposure groups without selection, grounding skills, and competent leadership
- Equating peer chat or unstructured ward meetings with evidence-based group psychotherapy
- Ignoring scapegoating, subgrouping, or confidentiality breaches as clinical process failures
- Offering DBT skills group alone and claiming full comprehensive DBT
Meet the patient
You walk past the day-programme group room and hear one member being told, by two others, that she "isn't really trying". She has gone very quiet. The co-facilitator is writing notes; the lead facilitator is letting it run because "the group needs to work it out". By the time you sit down, the quiet member has agreed she is the problem, and the other seven have stopped talking to her.[10][17]
Every registrar thinks this is "group dynamics". The examiner's question is sharper: what should the leader have done thirty seconds in, and why does cohesion — not catharsis — predict who gets better? That is the heart of this topic.[1][17]
References17ShowHide
- [1]Burlingame GM, McClendon DT, Yang C Cohesion in group therapy: A meta-analysis Psychotherapy (Chic), 2018.PMID 30335452
- [2]Burlingame GM, Seebeck JD, Janis RA, et al. Outcome differences between individual and group formats when identical and nonidentical treatments, patients, and doses are compared: A 25-year meta-analytic perspective Psychotherapy (Chic), 2016.PMID 27918191
- [3]Rosendahl J, Alldredge CT, Burlingame GM, Strauss B Recent Developments in Group Psychotherapy Research Am J Psychother, 2021.PMID 33745284
- [4]Barkowski S, Schwartze D, Strauss B, et al. Efficacy of group psychotherapy for anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis Psychother Res, 2020.PMID 32093586
- [5]Barkowski S, Schwartze D, Strauss B, et al. Efficacy of group psychotherapy for social anxiety disorder: A meta-analysis of randomized-controlled trials J Anxiety Disord, 2016.PMID 26953823
- [6]Schwartze D, Barkowski S, Strauss B, et al. Efficacy of group psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials Psychother Res, 2019.PMID 29179647
- [7]Burlingame GM, Svien H, Hoppe L, Hunt I, Rosendahl J Group therapy for schizophrenia: A meta-analysis Psychotherapy (Chic), 2020.PMID 32478561
- [8]Huntley AL, Araya R, Salisbury C Group psychological therapies for depression in the community: systematic review and meta-analysis Br J Psychiatry, 2012.PMID 22383765
- [9]Okumura Y, Ichikura K Efficacy and acceptability of group cognitive behavioral therapy for depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis J Affect Disord, 2014.PMID 24856569
- [10]Bloch S, Crouch E, Reibstein J Therapeutic factors in group psychotherapy. A review Arch Gen Psychiatry, 1981.PMID 7235852
- [11]Hoag MJ, Burlingame GM Evaluating the effectiveness of child and adolescent group treatment: a meta-analytic review J Clin Child Psychol, 1997.PMID 9292381
- [12]Bateman A, Fonagy P Effectiveness of partial hospitalization in the treatment of borderline personality disorder: a randomized controlled trial Am J Psychiatry, 1999.PMID 10518167
- [13]Bateman A, Fonagy P 8-year follow-up of patients treated for borderline personality disorder: mentalization-based treatment versus treatment as usual Am J Psychiatry, 2008.PMID 18347003
- [14]Linehan MM, Armstrong HE, Suarez A, Allmon D, Heard HL Cognitive-behavioral treatment of chronically parasuicidal borderline patients Arch Gen Psychiatry, 1991.PMID 1845222
- [15]Linehan MM, Korslund KE, Harned MS, et al. Dialectical behavior therapy for high suicide risk in individuals with borderline personality disorder: a randomized clinical trial and component analysis JAMA Psychiatry, 2015.PMID 25806661
- [16]Cuijpers P, Noma H, Karyotaki E, Cipriani A, Furukawa TA Effectiveness and Acceptability of Cognitive Behavior Therapy Delivery Formats in Adults With Depression: A Network Meta-analysis JAMA Psychiatry, 2019.PMID 30994877
- [17]Joyce AS, Piper WE, Ogrodniczuk JS Therapeutic alliance and cohesion variables as predictors of outcome in short-term group psychotherapy Int J Group Psychother, 2007.PMID 17661544