Cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, developed in the 60s by AT Beck, is today one of the most common and effective psychotherapy for the treatment of various psychopathological disorders: among these the major depressive disorder.
Specifically, the APA guidelines, the American Psychiatric Association, support and indicate the Cognitive behavioral therapy with or without association of drugs, such as the first choice of Treatment for major depression.
Some recent studies highlight the effectiveness of supporting individual treatment a path of group psychotherapy Always with cognitive behavioral orientation, which follows the same principles of individual treatment.
This support will improve and make the benefits of individual work more stable, as group psychotherapy offers the possibility of confronting more people and focuses both on personal problems and on interpersonal interactions.
Specifically, the goal of group psychotherapy is to help people resolve the emotional difficulties and encourage the personal development of the participants through the experience of the group itself, that is, to allow people who live similar inconveniences to experiment with new processes of attribution of meaning to their personal history and their suffering through comparison and the sharing with other group members.
Some of the distinctive characteristics of group psychotherapy are:
- Don’t be the only ones to have a problem
- increased self -esteem through the strengths of the group
- understanding and sharing without being criticized
- have a common goal
- alleviate pain, guilt and stress through sharing
- Receive constructive feedback from the group
- The group is a safe, welcoming and non -judgmental place
So, the group psychotherapy It aims to combine individual treatment with the strength of sharing and comparison with people who live similar difficulties, through greater awareness of the discomfort, in addition to the acquisition of technical specifications that allow to regain psychological well -being.
A study published in the BMC Psychiatry magazine (2014) examined the effectiveness of the therapy of cognitive-behavioral group for depression and explored the predictors of abandonment of therapy.
The study in question was conducted in a Norwegian psychiatric center, located in a rural area near the Polar Club. The center is the second in importance, which access about 33,000 individuals. The study involved 143 patients who participated in 26 group therapy meetings.
The Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI II) and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Bai) at different times of the therapeutic path were administered to all participants: at the beginning of the group route, after about 7 weeks, at the end of the route and the follow-up (after 3 months).
The results highlighted a drop-out rate of 17.5% (25 patients). The average of BDI II scores decreased from 28.5 (pre-treatment) to 18.5 (post-treatment) and remained stable at the three-month follow-up.
At the post treatment 44% of patients showed a significant improvement and 30% showed a recovery. After 3 months (follow-up) the aforementioned percentages increased respectively to 57% and 40% respectively. Instead, no predictors of abandonment of treatment were found.
Therefore, based on the results of this study, it emerges as patients following one cognitive-behavioral group therapyshow a decrease in anxiety and gods depressive symptoms.
