Create an annotated bibliography of at least seven scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles (books should not be used) published within the last three years
Create an annotated bibliography of at least seven scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles (books should not be used) published within the last three years.
These sources should directly relate to the selected psychotherapy group topic and reflect the current research on group psychotherapy practices, theories, and interventions.
Each entry must follow current professional APA formatting guidelines and include a brief annotation summarizing the source and its relevance to your project. It is important that these are summaries of the content and do not include direct quotes.
Attached copy of the psychotherapy group topic
EDCO 711
Psychotherapy Group Advertisement Assignment Instructions
Overview
This assignment offers an opportunity to transition from a psychoeducational group to a psychotherapy group focus. The task is to create a recruitment flyer for your psychotherapy group, aimed at attracting appropriate participants. This flyer should reflect a professional tone, clear communication, and adherence to ethical considerations in group therapy recruitment.
Instructions
Students will build upon the topic selected in Psychoeducational Group Plan Assignment as the course shifts to focus on developing a psychotherapy group. The first step in this process is to create a recruitment flyer that effectively communicates the purpose and structure of the group while attracting suitable members. The flyer must include the following components:
1. Brief Description of the Group's Topic Provide a concise yet compelling summary of the psychotherapy group's topic, highlighting its relevance and importance. This section should clearly convey the purpose of the group and why potential participants would benefit from joining. Infusion of scholarly evidence is required when describing the group’s topic and importance, with an emphasis on synthesizing the references utilized.
2. Participant Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria Specify the criteria for participation, including both inclusion and exclusion guidelines. This ensures that the group composition aligns with the therapeutic goals and ethical guidelines of group therapy.
3. Type of Group Indicate whether the group will be open or closed, homogeneous or heterogeneous. This information is critical in helping potential participants understand the group’s dynamics and structure.
4. Setting and Structure Outline the logistical aspects of the group, including the physical or virtual setting, the frequency of meetings, and the duration of the group. These details are essential for participants to understand the commitment involved.
5. Pre-Group Meetings or Preparation Include any information about any pre-group meetings or other preparatory steps required for participants. This helps to ensure that group members are adequately prepared for the therapy process.
Formatting and Design The flyer should be visually appealing, clear, and professional with proper credit given to any graphics or resources used. Ensure the information is well-organized, concise, and easy to read. Due to the brief nature of an advertisement, no direct quotes should be utilized. The flyer should be one page in length, at lest one reference must be used to describe the group’s topic.
Assessment Your assignment will be evaluated based on the clarity, professionalism, and effectiveness of the advertisement in communicating essential information to potential group members.
Note: The assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
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Watch from 1:05:35 to 1:23:15.
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Read: Yalom: Chapters 3, 7 – 9
Yalom, I. D., Leszcz, M. (2020-12-01). The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, 6th Edition. [[VitalSource Bookshelf version]]. Retrieved from vbk://9781541617568
Chapters 3
Group Cohesiveness
IN THIS CHAPTER WE EXAMINE THE PROPERTIES OF COHESIVENESS, the considerable evidence for group cohesiveness as a therapeutic factor, and the various pathways through which cohesiveness exerts its therapeutic influence.
What is cohesiveness and how does it influence therapeutic outcome? The short answer is that cohesiveness is the group therapy analogue to the relationship in individual therapy. First, keep in mind that a vast body of research on individual psychotherapy demonstrates that a good therapist-client relationship is essential for a positive outcome. The link between the therapeutic alliance and outcome is one of the most reliable research findings in our field.1 Is it also true that a good therapy relationship is essential in group therapy? Here again, the literature leaves little doubt that “relationship” is germane to positive outcome in group therapy.2 But relationship in group therapy is a far more complex concept than relationship in individual therapy. After all, there are only two people in the individual therapy relationship, whereas a number of individuals, generally six to ten, work together in group therapy. Hence it is insufficient to say that a good relationship is necessary for successful group therapy—we must also specify which relationship: The relationship between the client and the group therapist (or therapists, if there are co-leaders)? Or between the group member and other members? Or perhaps even between the individual and the “group” taken as a whole? In other words, there are intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group variables to consider as well.3
Over the past sixty years, a vast number of controlled studies of psychotherapy outcome have demonstrated that the average person who receives psychotherapy is significantly improved and that the outcome from group therapy is virtually identical to that of individual therapy.4 Furthermore, there is evidence that certain clients may obtain greater benefit from group therapy than from other approaches, particularly clients dealing with stigma or social isolation and those seeking new coping skills.5
The evidence supporting the effectiveness of group psychotherapy is so compelling that it prompts us to direct our attention toward another question: What are the necessary conditions for effective psychotherapy? After all, not all psychotherapy is successful. In fact, there is evidence that treatment may be for better or for worse—although most therapists help their clients, some therapists make some clients worse.6 Why? What are the characteristics of a successful therapist? Although many factors are involved, effective therapists are empathically attuned to their clients and are able to provide an understandable, culturally resonant explanation of distress and its treatment that in turn builds the client’s self-efficacy.7 Research evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that successful therapy—indeed, even successful pharmacotherapy treatment—is mediated by a relationship between treater and client that is characterized by agreement on the goals and tasks of treatment and marked by trust, warmth, empathic understanding, and acceptance.8
Although a positive therapeutic alliance is common to all effective treatments, it is by no means easily or routinely established. Extensive therapy research has focused on the nature of the therapeutic alliance and the specific interventions required to achieve, maintain, and repair the alliance when it gets strained or frayed.9
Is the quality of the relationship related to the therapist’s theoretical orientation? The evidence says no. Effective clinicians from different schools (psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, emotion-focused, humanistic, interpersonal, cognitive-behavioral) resemble one another (and differ from nonexperts in their own school) in their conception of the ideal therapeutic relationship and in the relationship they themselves establish with their clients.10
Note that the engaged, cohesive therapeutic relationship is necessary in all effective psychotherapies, even in the so-called mechanistic approaches—cognitive, behavioral, or systems-oriented forms of psychotherapy.11 One of the first large comparative psychotherapy trials, the National Institute of Mental Health’s (NIMH) Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program, concluded that successful cognitive-behavioral therapy or interpersonal therapy required “the presence of a positive attachment to a benevolent, supportive, and reassuring authority figure.”12 Research has shown that the client-therapist bond and the technical elements of cognitive therapy are synergistic: a strong and positive bond in itself disconfirms depressive beliefs and facilitates the work of modifying cognitive distortions. The absence of a positive bond renders technical interventions ineffective or even harmful.13 The experience the client has of the treater is of enormous importance and is a good predictor of outcome.14 And this experience emerges in large part from the therapist’s actions and use of self.15 More and more, these core therapist relationship capacities are being recognized as key foci in training programs.16
As noted, relationship plays an equally critical role in group psychotherapy. But the group therapy analogue of the client-therapist relationship in individual therapy must be a broader concept, encompassing the individual’s relationship to the group therapist, to the other group members, and to the group as a whole. In this text we refer to all of these relationships with the term “group cohesiveness.” Cohesiveness is a widely researched basic property of groups that has been explored in several hundred research articles, reviews, and meta-analytic studies synthesizing huge data pools.17 Unfortunately, there is little cohesion in the cohesion literature, which suffers from the lack of replication studies and the use of different definitions, scales, subjects, and rater perspectives.18
In general, however, the studies agree that groups differ from one another in the amount of “groupness” present. Those with a greater sense of solidarity, or “we-ness,” value the group more highly and have higher attendance, participation, and mutual support. Nonetheless, it is difficult to formulate a precise definition. A thoughtful review concluded that cohesiveness “is like dignity: everyone can recognize it but apparently no one can describe it, much less measure it.”19 The problem is that cohesiveness refers to overlapping dimensions. On the one hand, there is a group phenomenon—the total esprit de corps; on the other hand, there is the individual member cohesiveness (or, more strictly, the individual’s attraction to the group and to the leader).20 Furthermore, both the client’s emotional experience and the sense of task effectiveness in the group contribute to cohesion.21
In this book, we define cohesiveness as the attractiveness of a group for its members.22 Members of a cohesive group feel warmth and comfort in the group and a sense of belonging; they value the group and feel they are valued, accepted, and supported by other members.23
Esprit de corps and individual cohesiveness are interdependent, and group cohesiveness is sometimes computed simply by summing the individual members’ level of attraction to the group. Newer, more sophisticated methods of measuring group cohesiveness, such as the Group Questionnaire (GQ) developed by Gary Burlingame and colleagues, are gaining prominence and promise a more valid and reliable assessment of group cohesion.i
The more we examine cohesiveness, the more complexity we encounter. For example, we now know that each client’s view of cohesiveness is impacted by the group cohesiveness other members feel. Group cohesiveness is generally considered as a summation of the individual members’ sense of belonging, but we have also learned that group members are differentially attracted to the group—personality, interpersonal patterns, and attachment style all play a large role.24 Furthermore, while cohesiveness is not fixed but instead fluctuates greatly during the course of the group, we know that early cohesion is essential in setting the stage for the more challenging work to follow.25 Research has also differentiated between the members’ sense of belonging and their appraisal of how well the entire group is working. It is not uncommon for an individual to feel “that this group works well, but I’m not part of it.”26 It is also possible for members (for example, eating disorder clients) to value the interaction and bonding in the group yet be fundamentally opposed to the group goal.
Before leaving the matter of definition, we must point out that group cohesiveness is not only a potent therapeutic force in its own right; it is a precondition for other therapeutic factors to function optimally. When, in individual therapy, we say that it is the relationship that heals, we do not mean that love or loving acceptance is enough; we mean that an ideal therapist-client relationship creates conditions in which the necessary risk-taking, self-disclosure, catharsis, and intrapersonal and interpersonal exploration may unfold. It is the same for group therapy: Cohesiveness is necessary for other group therapeutic factors to operate.
THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUP COHESIVENESS
Although we discuss the therapeutic factors separately, they are, to a great degree, interdependent. Catharsis and universality, for example, are not complete processes. It is not the sheer pro
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