Group therapy is an effective, evidence-based treatment option for teenagers with mental health conditions and substance use disorders. When teenagers are struggling, group therapy can help.
“Depending on the nature of your problem, group therapy can be an ideal choice for addressing your concerns and making positive changes in your life,” explains a webpage of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Benefits That Individual Therapy May Not
“Joining a group of strangers may sound intimidating at first, but group therapy provides benefits that individual therapy may not,” says the APA. Psychologists find that “group members are almost always surprised by how rewarding the group experience can be.”
“A lot of the kids who get here don’t have much of a background with group therapy, so it is a bit of a struggle when they first get here,” says BasePoint therapist Elizabeth Moberg, LMSW. “It takes a while to get more comfortable with the format but after a week clients begin to open up and start to engage with one another providing feedback and support,” says Moberg.
“It’s one thing if the advice comes from a therapist but feedback from another client who says ‘Hey, I’ve been through the same thing, this is what I did,’ goes that much further. Hearing from someone their own age goes a long way instead of a therapist telling them ‘You need to do this’ or” Why don’t you try that?’ Clients know we’re here to provide that support for them but once you have a group of kids together who can support each other, the long-term success rate is much higher.”
A Support Network And A Sounding Board
Groups can act as a support network and a sounding board. Other group members often help you come up with specific ideas for improving a difficult situation or life challenge and hold you accountable along the way.
Moberg recently had a new client in her group who struggled to speak about some of the things she was dealing with. “A peer in the group took it upon herself to just say ‘Hey, it’s okay. This is a great group with a great therapist’ and now that peer who helped the new clients has started to process herself more than she’s ever processed and disclosed some things that she never disclosed before. It’s interesting to see new clients arrive who are scared but then they have someone else come in behind them who’s also scared and they take that step up to be more confident and start their healing journey right there.”
While the input of peers is helpful, it is important that therapists make sure the discussion is going in the right direction. “It’s very important for the group dynamic to have structure,” says Moberg. “If there’s a lack of structure, it can be hard for clients to get the full benefit out of everything. The way the BasePoint Academy curriculum is structured makes sure clients get the support they need, so they can apply what they learn successfully when they are moving forward.”
BasePoint serves communities in Dallas, TX, and surrounding areas, including Irving, Arlington, Fort Worth, Plano, McKinney, Allen, Richardson, Forney, Rockwall, Frisco, Prosper, Grapevine, Midlothian, Mansfield, Mesquite, and Garland. The Academy’s partial hospitalization program (PHP) and intensive outpatient program (IOP) were designed to address the specific mental health challenges and substance use issues today’s teenagers are facing. That’s why BasePoint created a dynamic program to address the multifaceted and complex teen experience that is unlike any generation before it.
Call BasePoint Academy today at (469) 283-5145 to learn more about how mental health therapy can make a real difference in your and your adolescent’s lives.
