What is it about?
Group therapy is applied every day and all over the world. The question of group format - should patients be treated in open or closed therapy groups? - has, however, been largely neglected in research so far. The results of this review show that open and closed psychotherapeutic groups are equally effective in reducing psychological distress. Our findings dispel the old prejudice that closed groups are superior to open groups. Both group formats have their advances, work differently, and should be used in clinical practice.
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Why is it important?
It is the world's first systematic review on the differential effectiveness of open and closed therapeutic groups. Given the fact that group therapy is applied every day and all over the world, we believe that the results are of great importance for clinicians as well as scientific readers. The results show that open and closed therapeutic groups are equally effective in reducing psychological distress. This finding supports the assumption that neither type of group is superior to the other, and both types of groups should be used in clinical practice.
Perspectives
Everybody seems to have an opinion about open and closed therapy groups. Therefore, we were quite astonished about the lack of studies concerning this topic when we started conducting the literature search for this article. We hope that it will help to dispel the old prejudice that closed groups are superior to open groups and to think more differentiated about group formats.
Meike Südmeier
Technische Universitat Carolo Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Differential Effectiveness of Open Versus Closed Psychotherapy Groups: A Systematic Review, American Journal of Psychotherapy, May 2024, American Psychiatric Association,
DOI: 10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.20230026.
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