Nursing.

Psychotherapy with Groups and Families

Psychotherapy with Groups and Families Program Transcript

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NARRATOR: Up to this point, you've had the experience of counseling people with a variety of psychiatric and mental health needs, on a one-to-one basis. In this course you'll take those skills and apply them to groups of people and entire families.

Sometimes called the Third Psychiatric Revolution, the discovery of the effectiveness of treating people in groups has added new approaches to our therapeutic arsenal. The evidence for the efficacy of group and family therapy has become so well documented-- and extensive in the literature-- that insurance companies not only reimburse, but encourage individuals in treatment to consider group therapy options.

Specific to families, the psychiatric- mental health nurse practitioner uses a wide variety of family therapy approaches, to help individuals in a family improve the way they relate to one another. And in so doing, improve their individual mental health as well. Not only does the deliberate use of psychotherapeutic approaches to family therapy improve the functioning of the current family, but it has the potential to improve family functioning for future generations.

In the group setting, the psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner works with individuals with a wide range of issues-- to improve not only themselves, but their ways of interacting with and relating to others. In group therapy, individuals have the opportunity to try out new communication and coping skills. Not only do group members draw on the strength of the group, but they contribute to the overall mental health of the other group members. As Dr. L. Cody Marsh once noted-- by the crowd they have been broken, by the crowd they will be healed.

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