Reference no: EM133326903
Assignment:
Working with adolescents in group therapy, there are a few unique considerations that group leaders should be mindful of. Leaders may want to minimize the number of distractions in the room and focus on the topics addressed directly to changes occurring in the group members' lives. Since adolescents tend to come into counseling involuntarily. A group leader will need to address their resistance first and focus on alliance building. Leaders also want to be different from other adults in the adolescent's life in a way that feels genuine and authentic, instead of acting "cool" (Berg et al., 2017).
As adolescents tend to be very sensitive to negative social cues and thus may feel insecure about expressing their feelings and needs in a group setting, the technique of role-playing could be effective. It will allow adolescent group members to indirectly explore their struggles without being too self-conscious (Berg et al., 2017).
A psychoeducational group may fit naturally into the developmental concerns of adolescents (Berg at al., 2017), since this type of group provides practical skills and knowledge, and also provides a safe environment for youths to practice and process this newly acquired information. Counseling groups can too be effective. They focus on here-and-now group interactions and explore inter- and intrapersonal relationships, which could be very helpful to adolescents' socialization issues. Leading a counseling group would require the group leader to trust not only the group process but the adolescents' ability to talk and process (Berg et al., 2017).
On the other hand, efforts in facilitating group cohesion appear to be vital in working with adolescents, as group cohesion promotes feelings of belonging, open social interactions, and lasting connections (Gray & Rubel, 2016). Open sharing with the group, finding similarities with each other, and resolving conflicts are some of the conditions contributing to group cohesion. A group leader wants to be experienced as genuine, authentic, strong and caring by the adolescent group members (Berg et al., 2017; Gray & Rubel, 2016) to support their experience of the cohesion process.
A helpful purpose of the group as a group structural element can also have a great impact on adolescent group members' experience of group cohesion (Gray & Rubel, 2016). Moreover, closed membership, compared to open group membership, has a more positive impact on group cohesion (Gray & Rubel, 2016), in that it creates fewer disruptions in group members' experience.