Group Dynamics Special Issue: Evidence-Based Group Therapy
Giorgio A. Tasca, Editor
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The September 2024 issue of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice is a Special Issue on Evidence-Based Group Therapy edited by Gary Burlingame and Bernhard Strauss. You can access the table of contents here: https://psycnet.apa.org/PsycARTICLES/journal/gdn/28/3. This is a landmark issue in support of the Evidence-Based Group Treatment (EBGT) website (https://evidencebasedgrouptherapy.org/). The website is the culmination of a 5-year effort jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Health of Germany, the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and the Society for Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy (Division 49 of the American Psychological Association [APA]). To support the website, international teams of researchers and scholars completed over a dozen meta-analyses in the past decade on the efficacy of group therapy for many disorders. In this Special Issue, the guest editors invited senior authors of disorder-specific meta-analyses of group therapy to summarize the meta-analytic findings for a clinician audience. Each author also provided commentary about the quality of the evidence for group therapy, practice implications, clinical vignettes of group treatment for those disorders, and issues related to diversity in research and practice. Practitioners, students, teachers, the general public, and administrators will find this Special Issue and website invaluable for summarizing evidence of group therapy’s efficacy and practice guidelines. Group treatment for specific disorders highlighted in the Special Issue includes Mood Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Eating Disorders, Severe Mental Illness, Substance Use Disorders, and Chronic Pain. The Special Issue also includes a new meta-analysis on Youth Behavioral Concerns. You can download the introduction to the special issue here: https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/gdn0000228. The Special Issue closes with two commentaries by Cheri Marmarosh and Molyn Leszcz. The commentary by Marmarosh is also available as a free download: https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/gdn0000227. The meta-analytic evidence indicates that group therapy is an effective and efficient treatment modality for many problems. Disseminating evidence through the EBGT website and this Special Issue of Group Dynamics will increase the public’s knowledge of the efficacy of group therapy, and it will help group clinicians and administrators to advocate prioritizing group therapy in clinical practices. I encourage members of Division 49 to download the articles in this Special Issue, use them in your teaching and supervision, share them with colleagues to advocate for group therapy, and cite them in your published work.