The Group Therapist's Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy - Softcover

Viers, Dawn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0789028514 ISBN 13: 9780789028518

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Get innovative ideas and effective interventions for your group therapy

Group work requires facilitators to use different skills than they would use in individual or family therapy. The Group Therapist’s Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy offers facilitators effective strategies to gather individuals who have their own unique needs together to form a group where each member feels comfortable exploring personal—and often painful—topics. This resource provides creative handouts, homework, and activities along with practical ideas and interventions appropriate for a variety of problems and population types. Each chapter gives detailed easy-to-follow instructions, activity contraindications, and suggestions for tracking the intervention in successive meetings. Every intervention is backed by a theoretical or practical rationale for use, and many chapters feature a helpful illustrative clinical vignette.

Group work has several benefits, including the ability to treat a greater number of clients with fewer resources. Group therapy work also relies on various theories that may seem to be difficult to apply to clinical practice. The Group Therapist’s Notebook is a practical guide that builds a bridge between theory and practice with ease. The text provides help for psychotherapists who are either beginning group practice or already utilizing groups as part of their practice and need a fresh set of ideas. The workbook framework allows group specialists to generate approaches and modify exercises to fit the varying needs of their clients. This guide offers a wide variety of valid approaches that effectively address client concerns. The book provides therapists with tips and ideas for starting and facilitating a group, assists them through sets of interventions, activities, and assignments, then showcases a variety of interventions for needs-specific populations or problems. Special sections are included with interventions for teens, young adults, couples, and family groups.

Interventions in The Group Therapist’s Notebook include:

• anger management skills
  
• ease feelings of shame and guilt
  
• substance use and abuse
  
• grief and loss
  
• positive body image
  
• guidance through change
  
• independence and belonging
  
• interpersonal skills
  
• coping skills
  
• crisis intervention strategies
  
• much, much more!
  
  

The Group Therapist’s Notebook is an essential resource for both novice and more experienced practitioners working in the mental health field, including counselor educators, social workers, guidance counselors, prevention educators, and other group facilitators. Every nonprofit agency, counseling center, private practice, school, hospital, treatment facility, or training center that organizes and implements therapy groups of any type should have this guide in their library.

About this title

About the Author

Dawn Viers, PhD, is an assessment specialist/outpatient clinician with New River Valley Community Services in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her areas of specialization include foster care and adoption, attachment disorders, and trauma- informed practice. She is the editor of The Group Therapist‘s Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities in Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2007) and co-editor, with Katherine M. Hertlein, PhD, of The Couple and Family Therapist’s Notebook: Homework, Handouts, and Activities for Use in Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2005).

Review

"EXCELLENT DESCRIPTIONS of highly applicable group activities relevant to a wide range of groups of a wide range of types, from training groups to addictions and grief resolution and support; to working with children, adolescents, and college-age members; and couple and family groups. The descriptions of the activities are detailed, with a sound rationale, and appropriate lists of props and copies of forms. An especially useful element in each description is a section on contraindications of the activity to alert group workers to limitations and potential problems. . . . Students and new professionals will find this notebook VERY VALUABLE, and seasoned group workers will also benefit from this new collection of activities through which to provide increased breadth and depth and additional stimulation into their groups. This book MAKES A SOLID CONTRIBUTION TO THE PRACTICE OF GROUP WORK and to the group members we serve. -- Donald E. Ward, PhD, Professor and Chair, Counseling Committee, Department of Psychology and Counseling, Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas; Editor, Journal for Specialists in Group Work

"Includes straightforward and powerful learning activities that can be used in groups that focus on a wide variety of goals. . . . Does an EXCELLENT job . . . providing theoretical insight into respective counseling issues and following up with procedures that take full advantage of group process. I found the activities throughout the book to be relevant across age groups, populations, settings, counseling specialties (e.g., school, mental health, psychology, social work, etc.), and counseling issues. . . . Provides A UNIQUE AND VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION to both the practitioner trainer. . . . Offers the reader a comprehensive compilation of state-of-the-art resources for each counseling issue. If I were to have compiled a notebook of my best activities and resources that have withstood the test of time for conducting group counseling, this would be it." -- Russell A. Sabella, PhD, Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0789028514
• ISBN 13: 9780789028518
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278
• Editor: Viers Dawn