Group Treatment and Non Professional Approaches to Treatment

Unquestionably one of the most significant changes in psychological treatment in recent years has been the increase in group therapy. Treatment in groups has the obvious advantages of saving both time and money. Instead of seeing only one client per hour, the therapist can handle perhaps eight or ten--often more. This means that each client pays less for the therapist's time It also means that more people can receive help--perhaps an important advantage in a society where mental health professionals are in very short supply. Unfortunately, this also means that the therapist may have very little knowledge of each individual case  and is very apt not to pick up on serious mental health issues; such as severe depression and a potential suicide attempt.
It is claimed that cost efficiency, and profit seeking, alone does not account for the spectacular rise in group therapy. Rather--it is claimed-- the popularity of this type of treatment is due primarily to the current belief that many psychological difficulties are basically interpersonal difficulties--problems in dealing with other people--and that consequently these difficulties must be worked out in an interpersonal context with other people. These other people may be one's "significant others" thus a married or couple in a relationship, an entire family, or a peer group may be "treated "together. Likely the members of a group will have nothing more in common than the fact that they are all human beings with problems.
The number of different kinds of group therapy is staggering. There are behavioural groups, and many, many varieties of humanistic groups. There are groups for married couples, those in a "relationship, unmarried couples, for rape victims, delinquents, parents of problem children, problem children, cancer patients, the elderly, alcoholics, spouses and family of alcoholics, and so on , and so on. Most of all, there are groups for anyone who wishes to get in out of the cold, a cup of hot coffee, a snack, a place to sleep, or just cares to come.

What Specifically Does Group Treatment Claim to Offer?

• Information: From the group leader the clients can acquire information about psychological disturbance. Clients may also receive advice and direct guidance as to their specific problems from both the group leader and the other members of the group.
• Hope:  Like most other kinds of therapy, group therapy claims to instil in clients the hope that they can  change if they are so willing, and this hope can have great therapeutic value.
• Universality:  Clients often enter therapy believing that they are unique in their wretchedness"--that no one else could possibly have thoughts or impulses as frightening and unacceptable as theirs. In the group, they make the comforting discovery that such problems are relatively common; in-fact after a period often every one in the group will manifest the exact same problems.
• Altruism:  Group members help one another with advice, encouragement empathy, sympathy, and suggestions on how to pull scams in order to stay out of jail, obtain more social funding, a longer stay--what ever.
•  Corrective Recapitulation of the Family Group:  The group is encouraged to behave like a family, or gang, with leaders representing parents, and other members representing siblings/gang brothers or sisters. Thus the group, as a sort of new family/gang, may help to heal wounds and ease inhibitions produced by the client's original family/gang.
• Development of Social Skills:  In Canada, the most commonly  used program of this type is the Saskatchewan New-start Life Skill Program. Hopefully, corrective feed back, from other group members, may help to correct flaws in the client's  interpersonal behaviour.
• Imitative Behaviour:  groups are usually very successful at developing this trait. The group leader and other members of the group may serve as models, good or bad for new kinds of behaviour.
• Interpersonal Learning:  By interacting with the group, clients may gain insight into themselves and revise their ideas of the kinds of relationships they want to have (they can also obtain a "college degree on how to pull a scam successfully). Furthermore, the the group may serve as a social laboratory in which to try out new "selves" and new kinds of relationships.
• Group Cohesiveness:  The sense of belonging--and intimacy that develops within the group as a whole may give clients both comfort and courage.
• Catharsis:  Within the protective atmosphere of the group, members may feel free to express emotions that they have been bottling up, to the detriment of their behaviour; or, in order to feel that they really fit in--they may feel a compulsion to B.S. experiences

Not all these factors are unique to group therapy; information may be conveyed, hope instilled behaviour modeled, and catharsis achieved in individual therapy as well. Not all these factors sill be equally important in every form of group therapy. Different kinds of groups stress different factors as the major route to change (though most groups rely heavily on social support.