What is Group Therapy?

In group therapy, you learn that you are not alone in your problems, and you can experiment with trying to relate to people differently in a safe environment, with a counselor present to assist as needed. Additionally, group therapy allows you to learn from the experiences of others with similar problems, and also allows you to better understand how people very different from yourself view the world and interact with people. Of course, there are many other differences between group therapy and individual psychotherapy.

Group therapy is different from individual therapy in a number of ways, with the most obvious difference being the number of people in the room with the counselor. Originally, group therapy was used as a cost-saving measure, in institutional settings where many people needed psychological treatment and there were too few therapists to provide the treatment. However, in conducting research on the effectiveness of these therapy groups, clinicians discovered that the group experience benefited people in many ways that were not always addressed in individual psychotherapy.