Aristotle, the Greek philosopher centuries ago said, “Man is by nature a social animal.”
This still stands true. Humans are constantly seeking out connections and companionship with other beings. Referring to one of our previous articles ‘Group belongingness or just FOMO?’, a human emotional need to identify with and be accepted by members of a group is known as group belongingness. This particular phenomenon creates a foundation for Group Therapy. By surrounding ourselves with people with who we can identify based on the similarity of our problems, who accept us and can guide us to ameliorate our conditions, group therapy acts as a tool for our mental health problems. Even though it is an excellent source of a support system, it has its positives and negatives.
Here, we explore some, if not all of the upsides of group therapy :
Builds empathetic connections: By sharing one’s internal turmoils with a group of people who understand how one is feeling, group therapy can be a strong force of reassurance and healing.
As stated by Jonathan Spievack, founder and CEO of Grouport, an online group therapy resource, “When you’re in a group, it reduces the mental load. You finally feel like you can talk to people who really get what you’re going through.”
It is akin to the idea of ‘we are all in the same boat’.
Bridges inequalities and de-stigmatises seeking help: Our theme for world mental health day on the 10th of October, 2021 was Mental health in an unequal world. As covered by a previous article, titled, ‘Mental Health in an Unequal World’ owing to this year’s theme, we must constantly practise compassion and acceptance with every individual. It is our duty to carve out a society that is stigma-free.
“The fear of being discriminated, the fear of stigma, and the fear of being labelled interrupt the acceptance process,” says Kashmira Kakalia, a mental health practitioner.
This same process of acceptance thrives in a group therapy setting as all these fears act as links for the clients to encourage and support each other. Their inequalities in the outside world now become ways of seeing eye to eye. Group therapy de-stigmatizes seeking help since anyone joining knows they will be surrounded by people confronting similar issues (Sloan, 2021), which can be a source of comfort.
Discovering perspectives: Each client faces their own intensity of a problem. For example, some individuals may be tackling anxiety for quite some time and have come to therapy as a last resort, whereas some individuals decide to come for therapy the moment they feel that the anxiety symptoms are out of control. Both kinds of these clients will share different stories of their day to day functioning, their coping habits, and an individualistic understanding of the problem. Such accounts can help clients in building diverse opinions, sharing additional ideas for help and reducing the feelings of loneliness through group therapy.
Group therapy sometimes can be inefficient and risky based on the following downsides:
Social anxiety and Glossophobia (fear of public speaking): We are well aware of the fact that the rates of social anxiety among people have significantly increased since the pandemic. In addition to this, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, Glossophobia is a very common phobia, affecting up to 75% of the world’s population. These two conditions act as a significant hurdle in a group therapy setting. In individual therapy, a person with social anxiety has to only communicate with the therapist, as opposed to a minimum of 5 people plus the therapist, which can seem like a crowd for certain individuals. While we do stress the importance of listening in group therapy, talking and sharing is equally important but sometimes due to irrational fears, this part of the process lacks. However, to tackle this disadvantage, there are groups that are designed to target these fears. They provide the participants with an opportunity to work through their anxieties in a relatively safer environment before applying their learnings to the outside world. As mentioned in the previous article on Group Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy for Anxiety could be greatly beneficial in helping the group identify their fearful thoughts and emotions and subsequently learn to cope with them.
Social Loafing: This phenomenon is extremely common in a group setting. Certain clients may be actively working on improving while other clients are simply riding on the success of the others. This can be detrimental to the therapeutic process since the clients who are socially loafing are not experiencing any personal changes and are becoming dependent on the other clients in the group. They could easily hide their issues and the entire purpose of being in a group setting is lost. However, all therapists are well aware of this common phenomenon and there are various methods put in place that ensure the acknowledgement of each client’s contribution to eliminating any social loafing.
Confidentiality: A dominant ethical principle for therapy is confidentiality. Naturally, with more people involved in group therapy, it is harder to ensure this. While confidentiality is set in stone, for all kinds of therapy, the potential for a breach is higher in this setting because of the number of people that are involved. This adds to the fear of not only being judged by one’s fellow clients but also by people who may hear of their experiences outside the four walls of therapy. To take care of this problem to the best extent possible, this is openly discussed often with the group’s participants and each individual controls the content and extent of their disclosure.
Since its inception which can be traced back to treating patients with Tuberculosis in the early 1900s and its use during World War II for treating individuals with emotional reactions (Schachter, n.d.), group therapy has greatly evolved. In the mid-1940’s pioneers of Psychology such as Carl Rogers and Kurt Lewin, along with Alfred Adler provided significant structure to this process, as a method of learning more about human behaviour and conceptualising Family therapy, respectively. Today, as a direct effect of the pandemic, group therapy is conducted online as well. While group therapy creates a very comforting and encouraging environment for clients, in the case of certain individuals who are extremely antisocial, shy, impulsive, passive-aggressive or suffering from a psychotic disorder and in crisis situations this method can do more harm than good. When considering group therapy one should keep in mind that it is found to be more suitable for depression, obesity, panic disorder, social anxiety, chronic pain or substance abuse and for improving social skills, to help people deal with a range of issues such as anger, shyness, loneliness and low self-esteem. In the end, resources and methods to seek mental health support are unlimited and one can always opt for either individual or group therapy based on their own free will.
– Urveez Kakalia & Ferangiz Hozdar.