5 Different Types of Group Therapy: A Comprehensive Guide

Navigating life’s challenges can often feel isolating. Sometimes, connecting with others makes the journey toward healing and self-discovery easier. This is where group therapy steps in, offering a supportive environment to explore personal struggles alongside individuals facing similar experiences. Choosing the right group from the wide variety of types of group therapy can be an important step on the road to recovery and emotional well-being.

Understanding the intricacies and benefits associated with different types of group therapy may let you approach this process with more confidence. While both individual and group therapy can be effective approaches, group therapy offers unique benefits through shared experiences and collective support, often bringing together individuals with similar struggles or conditions.

However, group therapy is not just about talking in a room. From CBT groups focusing on restructuring thinking patterns to less known options like Dungeons and Dragons therapy sessions, there are different ways to gain social or coping skills. Each approach offers unique benefits designed to support various needs. So let’s explore how choosing among different types of group therapy might empower you.

5 Most Common Types of Group Therapy

Though every group takes its shape from both the facilitator or therapist and those attending, there are five types of groups commonly used in therapy. Each offers unique group therapy benefits for mental health, from providing emotional support to exploring behavioral challenges and creating personal or professional change in members’ lives.

These approaches vary depending on factors like structure and treatment length as well as the therapist’s role and qualifications and the level of group member engagement. However, just as in individual therapy, no matter which of these types you sign up for, it can be comforting and confidence-boosting to see other group members working with and even overcoming the same issue that you’re experiencing or who share a similar dynamic. Let’s face it, may be more powerful and supportive than all the one-on-ones you can book with even the very best therapist.

1. Psychoeducational Group Therapy

Psychoeducational groups, like some online support groups, typically involve a qualified mental health professional leading and educating participants in a semi-structured or unstructured format on a specific issue. By examining the complexities of our minds, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves. This learning process unfolds through thought-provoking discussions and engaging exercises.

It’s a journey that helps you build skills and absorb valuable insights. The ultimate goal is to improve your daily life, no matter what challenges you’re facing. You might be coping with a recent loss, struggling to adjust to a major change, or simply seeking a sense of balance. Whatever your circumstances, you’ll develop strategies to better manage your emotions and emotions, finding a path to self-acceptance.

The focus tends to be on information-including education, skill-building, behavior change, communication tools, goal visualization, and interpersonal dynamics. The group members generally meet every week or more depending on whether the program is designed to run over eight to 12 weeks, for a shorter period (brief therapy programs), or continuously with no set treatment endpoint.

If your employer does not have employee assistance program services in place, psychoeducational groups are commonly used for company meetings aimed at reducing employee stress, teaching time management skills, or working with office conflicts in workplaces.

2. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Based on CBT treatment, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy groups have been proven in several research studies to be incredibly beneficial-both individually and in groups. Cognitive behavioral therapy, regardless of the setting, rests on a specific premise-for many, their responses to events are largely determined by:

• Beliefs (how the world works; how they should be treated)
• Values (what should be praised and protected, punished or feared)
• Perceptions of events and interactions
• Feelings (some valid, some simply triggered by past experiences rather than by actual reality)
• Patterns of thought
• Responses to the people around them
• And behaviors (many of which get embedded and create difficulty in life as adults even though they had their original basis in a situation they have likely outgrown)

Maybe a hurtful experience in their past, an unhealthy family dynamic that had them reacting in unhelpful ways just to manage what seemed unmanageable, or a stressful, unpredictable environment that was beyond their capacity as a child to address, so instead, they became conditioned to take a reactive role rather than an action-oriented role.

CBT is great if the immediate goals involve tangible changes like

• Better boundaries
• Anger management
• Healthy ways to manage grief or loss
• Reducing drinking or substance use
• How to deal with an ongoing mental health diagnosis or challenge

It can be used for groups, individuals, and even relationships as a method for couples to resolve issues and get a little bit of distance between the triggering event and the inevitable reactive response, as we will explore later when reviewing how some therapists specialize in types of group therapy with proven effectiveness.

3. Support or Self Help Groups

Support groups take many shapes-possibly:

• In-person or through online therapy meetings
• Open or closed, guided by a facilitator (often a licensed professional or with lived experience)
• Led by peers, or even independently

Mutual support groups have a remarkable track record of success in tackling mental health challenges, such as substance abuse. By fostering a sense of community and connection, these groups provide a comforting space for individuals to share their experiences and find support without the financial burden or privacy concerns often associated with traditional therapy.

This makes them great if you are just starting to dip your toes in therapeutic support or find traditional talk therapy (aimed at processing past experiences in the belief that it’ll positively change the future) to feel counterproductive or too expensive. For example, for anyone whose family does not place high value on traditional therapeutic options, support groups can be less stigmatizing or frightening to discuss even with the very best therapist.

4. Skills Development Groups

The content for these groups varies significantly based on factors like facilitator preference, expertise, and location. Skills development groups often utilize CBT therapy techniques as well as the interpersonal components inherent in all group sessions to introduce and cultivate the type of adaptive skills, methods, resources, strategies, and behavioral changes that participants will use for growth outside the therapy group.

Some examples of these are:

• Assertiveness training
• Anger or stress management
• Impulse control to improve unhealthy thought
• Relationship or reactive tendencies

In a supportive group setting, members benefit from direct guidance, empowering them to put new skills into practice and experiment with different techniques and concepts. This hands-on approach is essential for turning knowledge into tangible results.

We’ve all been there – drawn in by a compelling title, eager to kick-start change. But more often than not, reading a self-help guide or scrolling through listicles doesn’t translate to lasting transformation. Without opportunities to practice and internalize new skills, progress remains fleeting.

Therapy and support groups offer a unique environment where individuals can move beyond theory and ideology, and actually implement lasting changes in their lives. This space encourages participants to take action, seek feedback, and fine-tune their approach – leading to more sustained growth and development.

5. Interpersonal Process Groups

This approach for groups rests on the premise that examining interpersonal relationships within the group will benefit participants. In many ways, it’s very similar to psychodrama-with some therapists trained specifically in psychotherapy group types known for being adept at spotting group member dynamics and encouraging members to work with one another in sessions rather than offering directive insights as therapists tend to do when running groups.

That can ultimately make it easier to get those needs met-particularly the kinds of needs you’ve wanted to get met for a long, long time but have continued not to. This doesn’t need to involve a major personality shift. However process-oriented approaches are commonly used in psychotherapy groups and programs because group member support, feedback, and reactions can expose unhelpful patterns and encourage new and adaptive responses that might start breaking repetitive behaviors in places that have kept those deeply embedded.