Mental health care equity and access: A group therapy solution.

Mental health services are experiencing unprecedented levels of demand from clients during COVID resulting in longer wait lists and therapist burnout. As Nemoyer et al. (2019) point out, minorities experience a higher burden of mental illness while having less access and lower quality treatments. COVID has increased demands for mental health services even further, creating bottlenecks of care, therapist burnout, and leading to ever longer wait lists. This article will argue that inefficient supply of services is created by mental health providers being incentivized toward individual therapy. Group therapy offers a solution because it is a "triple E treatment"-efficient, effective, and equivalent to individual therapy in terms of outcomes (Burlingame & Strauss, 2021). Group interventions also address systemic racism and the needs of minorities who have been marginalized and cope with minority stress. This article will utilize a labor and financial impact analysis to demonstrate how increasing group therapy by 10% nationally, particularly in private practice and primary care integration settings, would increase treatment access for over 3.5 million people while reducing the need for 34,473 additional new therapists and simultaneously saving over $5.6 billion. It will discuss how incentivizing groups while holding therapists accountable for training, competency when working with people from diverse backgrounds, and outcomes can result in improved efficiency. This will allow therapists greater freedom to collaboratively select the most effective treatments for those from underserved and minority backgrounds and create easier access to quality treatments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Group Psychotherapy as a Specialty: An Inconvenient Truth.

Group psychology and group psychotherapy (GPGP) are distinctive, effective practices that meet an important need. In 2018, the American Psychological Association recognized GPGP as a specialty, thus setting standards for education and training in the field. Although there is a need for high-quality group psychotherapy, practitioners often lack standardized training, thus posing a risk to patients. Adoption of these standards by practice settings and training programs is essential for expanding the availability of quality group therapy. An understanding of how the specialty became recognized and of the specific criteria for its practice (i.e., public need, diversity, distinctiveness, advanced scientific and theoretical preparation, structures and models of education and training, effectiveness, quality improvement, guidelines for delivery, and provider identification and evaluation) are essential for expanding the availability of high-quality group psychotherapy. Such understanding also informs how training programs can align with standards. This article provides a foundation of understanding and details implications of group psychotherapy's establishment as a specialty. The benefits of high-quality group psychotherapy are far-reaching, whereas the risks of inadequate practice loom large.

Innovations in group assessment: How focused brief group therapy integrates formal measures to enhance treatment preparation, process, and outcomes.

Focused brief group therapy (Whittingham, 2015) is an integrative interpersonal approach to brief group therapy that uses formal assessment to guide and inform treatment. By utilizing assessment as a key part of real-time clinical feedback throughout treatment, multiple therapeutic goals are enhanced. This article addresses 2 specific uses of assessment within focused brief group therapy-to focus treatment around interpersonal subtype distress and to inoculate clients against self-sabotage. (PsycINFO Database Record

The impact of providing group performance feedback on a large mental health system.

Over a 2-year period, quality measures were instituted in the behavioral health services of Mercy Health (Ohio and Kentucky), one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in the United States. More than 25,000 patients were seen during this period across two states, in inpatient, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient units. The Outcome Questionnaire 30.2 (Lambert, Finch, Okiishi, & Burlingame, 2005) was used at admission and discharge for the purposes of quality improvement, and results were integrated into quality improvement processes such as group supervision, telepresence supervision, and site accountability. This article will discuss how measurement provided an essential foundation for continuous quality improvement processes, leading to enhanced outcomes for patients with severe and persistent mental illness and addictions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Attachment and Interpersonal Theory and Group Therapy: Two Sides of the Same Coin.

Attachment and interpersonal theories and therapies have significant overlap, in terms of both theoretical underpinnings and overlapping factor structure of the instruments used. This article discusses how group theories and therapies utilize this common conceptual framework both in well-established and newer approaches.