A Critique of Group Therapy Research

In this randomized clinical trial, we compared time-limited group psychotherapy and time-limited individual psychotherapy. Ninety-eight nonpsychotic psychiatric outpatients participated. There were five therapists, all highly experienced with brief therapies. Significant improvement and maintenance of improvement occurred in both treatments. Although both treatments were quite beneficial on a number of our subjective measures, there was a clear preference by patients for the individual therapy. Recommendations are offered for improving the acceptability of group treatment approaches.