ESSAY: Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Group Therapy for Addiction

To prepare:
Review this week’s Learning Resources and reflect on the insights they provide on group therapy for addiction.
View the media, Levy Family: Sessions 1-7, and consider the psychotherapeutic approaches being used.
The Assignment
In a 2- to 3-page paper, address the following:

Identify the psychotherapeutic approach that the group facilitator is using, and explain why she might be using this approach.
Determine whether or not you would use the same psychotherapeutic approach if you were the counselor facilitating this group, and justify your decision.
Identify an alternative approach to group therapy for addiction, and explain why it is an appropriate option.
Support your position with evidence-based literature.
Note: The School of Nursing requires that all papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and references. The sample paper provided by the Walden Writing Center provides examples of those required elements (available at http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/57.htm). All papers submitted must use this formatting.

ANSWER

Psychotherapeutic Approaches to Group Therapy

The evaluation and understanding of a patient’s primary characteristics is significant in group therapies. This is because a patient’s primary characteristics could be attributed to a number of challenging disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Therefore, the choice of the most appropriate and suitable approach to providing the best therapy services to groups poses a lot of challenges to group facilitators. This paper explores different psychotherapeutic approaches that are used when dealing with groups in therapy, coupled with Levy’s family videos. The paper focuses on Mr. Levy, an alcoholic that abuses alcohol so as to get over his past traumatic experiences that he underwent while in Iraq. According to Dobson & Dobson (2018), Mr. Levy’s use of alcohol has taken a toll on his relationship with his wife who constantly questions his continued abuse of alcohol. Due to the persistent calls from his wife about his alcoholic behavior, Levy seeks help to stop drinking and prevent the imminent divorce. The group facilitator begins the entire therapy session by the use of individual therapy. This approach is designed to help the group facilitator to gain an understanding of the client’s primary characteristics and simple beliefs. This approach makes it easy for the facilitator to strengthen their relationships with their clients. Through the individual therapy approach, she was able to identify and recognize Levy’s continued use and abuse of alcohol, his continued deteriorating family relationship and post-traumatic stress disorder from his experience during the Iraq war. All these were the significant issues that were affecting Levy at the time. Other than individual therapy, the group facilitator uses a number…