Group psychotherapy

Group psychotherapy is therapy delivered to several people at once by a clinician, where the other people in the room are part of how it works rather than a way of seeing more clients in an hour.

That is the part worth explaining, because most people assume a group is a compromise. It is not. A good deal of what people come to therapy about only happens in the presence of others — being misread, going quiet, taking up too much room or none at all, expecting judgement and finding it where it is not. In individual therapy you describe those things afterwards. In a group they occur in the room, at the time, with a clinician present to notice them and slow them down. Hearing someone else say the thing you have never said out loud does something too, and it is not something a psychologist can manufacture one-to-one.

Groups at PHC are small and closed: the members are selected, they start together, and nobody is added mid-way. Sessions are facilitated rather than left to run themselves. There are ground rules agreed at the start, and the first of them is confidentiality.

On confidentiality, plainly. Your clinician is bound by professional confidentiality, as in any session. The other members are bound by an agreement, which is not the same thing and we will not pretend it is. Every group at PHC begins by making that explicit: what is said in the room stays in the room, members are not to be identified outside it, and breaking that is grounds for leaving the group. You should know where that line sits before you decide, which is why it is on this page rather than in a form.

What it is not: it is not a support group without a clinician, it is not a lecture or a workshop, and it is not cheaper individual therapy. It is also not a substitute for individual work where individual work is what is indicated. Whether a group is right for you is a clinical decision made after an initial session, not a choice you have to make from a website.

PHC is an assessment-first practice, and group work depends on it more than any other format here — because a group is only as useful as the fit between the people in it.

1. An initial session.We ask what has been going on, for how long, and what it is costing you. Where the picture needs more than a conversation, emotional assessment and symptom screening decides which further tests, if any, are clinically warranted.
2. A judgement about format, not just about therapy.Whether you are offered a group, individual sessions, or both, follows from that assessment. Groups are formed when a clinical need and enough suitably matched members coincide — which means a group is not always available the week you ask, and we will tell you that rather than hold you waiting on something vague.
3. Facilitated sessions, in clinic.Sessions are led by a PHC clinician throughout. Group work is delivered in clinic rather than online. Fees for group sessions differ from individual sessions and are quoted to you before you commit — how fees and booking work.
4. Reviewed as it goes.Group membership is revisited rather than assumed. Many people do group work alongside individual psychotherapy, and where the group is not doing what was intended, your clinician will say so and change the plan.

The group programme running at DHA. PHC's Hypno-yoga runs four days a week in a group at the DHA clinic, combining mindful yoga, relaxation techniques, breathwork, guided imagery and clinical hypnotherapy-based therapeutic interventions. It is a different thing from group psychotherapy and that page describes it in its own terms — but if group format is what appeals to you, it is worth reading.

At PHC, group work is used with adolescents and adults who are able to tolerate being in a room with other people while something difficult is discussed — which is not the same as finding it comfortable, and a great deal of the value is in that gap.

It is not for everyone, and being told a group is not indicated for you is not a judgement about you. Where someone is in acute distress, where the difficulty is one a group setting would make harder rather than easier, or where individual work needs to come first, PHC will say so plainly rather than place you.

• Social anxiety

Social anxiety is the condition page on this site that names group psychotherapy as a route that may be indicated, and the reason is worth stating: a difficulty that only appears around other people can be worked on directly in a room that has other people in it. Which route applies to you is decided at the initial session. See every condition we work with.

No psychologist's supplied profile names group psychotherapy as a modality they practise, so this page does not print a name. That is deliberate. Every clinician card on this site is drawn from what that clinician wrote about themselves, and we will not manufacture one.

What is true of the whole team: every psychologist at PHC holds a minimum postgraduate qualification in clinical psychology and completed over 800 supervised clinical hours before joining. Which clinician facilitates a group, and whether a group is right for you at all, is decided at the initial session. See every psychologist at PHC.