Group Psychotherapy Research: Current Status and Future Trends on the Dawn of the New Millennium

For the past two decades, the group psychotherapy research literature has been dominated by the efficacy study. Over this period of time, this laboratory-based work has acquired a number of methodological requisites all aimed at maximizing its internal validity in order that causal inferences can be made with increasing confidence. These very refinements in methodology, however, have led to increasing criticisms regarding the meaningfulness and relevance of the findings to real-world settings. This paper briefly reviews these developments and offers predictions, gleaned from the current literature, about future directions of research. In particular, three areas are highlighted: (1) the development of effectiveness studies, (2) the greater sophistication of process research, and (3) a renewal of the very early interest in group therapy treatment of medical conditions.