HISTORY

Group Therapy is the other branch of systemic therapy along with Family Therapy and has just as wide a range of sources. Original Group therapists emerged around WWII with work on veterans as well as dynamic therapists  and grew through more formal theoretical work by Bion and others. Gestalt therapists also used group processes successfully to do their therapeutic work.

Perhaps Group Therapy had its heyday with the development of "Therapeutic Communities" which were popular in the 1960's and 70's well after discovery of antipsychotics provided the initiative deinstitutionalisation.

This may have been because of the recognition of need for a "therapeutic milieu" in which inpatients could feel empowered. 

In the 1970's as CBT took hold, research into high Expressed Emotions in families of patients with schizophrenia led to consideration of "group psychoeducation" as a therapeutic tool.

As the Dynamic approach to group therapy became less popular, the standardised group therapy using CBT techniques and psychoeducation became increasingly applied by the 1990's. A parallel development which occurred both in the 1980's and 1990's was the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Cognitive Therapy programmes which deal with affect directly as opposed to considering it as a secondary effect of thoughts. 

TRAINING IN GROUP THERPY

Group Therapy Association of Australia

Group Therapy at Mednet Australia

Mednet Australia has been particularly utilised in a psychoeducational/CBT based approach from the early to mid 1990's. This development became operationalised at the inception of Mednet Australia and a number of groups based on "Affective Behavioural Cognitive" approach which recognises the importance of dealing with affect directly (thus placing it at an equal footing as an arena for intervention with though and behaviour) was applied with a number of groups both in the Western and NorthWestern metropolitan and outer metropolitan regions of Melbourne and later in the South Eastern metropolitan and outer-metropolitan region of Melbourne.

Associated with the standard 8 session group therapy course were subsequent development of self-support groups with the recognition of the importance of empowering patents recovering from depression. Mednet has helped develop at least three such self-support groups in Victoria.

The affect focus of the Group psychoeducational programme at Mednet Australia eventually led to the 15 session individual therapy programme, Affective Behavioural Cognitive Computer Assisted Therapy (ABCCAT).