| Abstract: | In view of an increasing importance of group therapies and the intention in healthcare politics to support group treatment, it seems appropriate to provide a review of the current research efforts in this field. In this review, several research traditions are described with a clear focus on the effectiveness of group treatment. Both systematic narrative reviews and recent meta-analyses clearly demonstrate that group treatment of various disorders is equally as effective as individual psychotherapy. Besides outcome research there are other developments in the field, such as the improvement of manualized and focused group therapies even outside cognitive behavioral concepts. Studies related to feedback in groups, specific patient characteristics (especially alexithymia and attachment) as well as the construction of new measures seem to be characteristic for group research during recent years. There is still a need for research related to group dynamics and process aspects of small groups as well as the group leaders and their behavior. In total, research on group psychotherapy has clearly progressed, which justifies the support of this treatment setting. |
