About 6-15 anxiety disorder patients are normally treated together in an anxiety group therapy, contrary to consulting a therapist individually. However, treating anxiety in group therapy has some benefits, but disadvantages as well.
Because all the participants in a group have the same disorder experienced themselves, which will give the individual a more comfortable feeling. He or she will soon begin to realize that their problem is not an isolated one. Once they realize that there are others in the same situation, it can become life-affirming for them, particularly if the anxiety disorder makes them imagine that they are some type of an outsider or being a “freak” or being different from, and for that reason inferior to the majority of society.
One of the great advantages of anxiety group therapy is the input of the experience the fellow patients have. It can assist in discovering answers to everyone’s troubles. A therapist might not have established that by him- or herself.
The patient, when learning coping skills like the ones learned through cognitive anxiety therapy, can benefit from understandings based on shared experiences of a situation which causes anxiety, suggested by the patient’s group members.
The comfortof being in a group setting reduces anxiety and can bring the patient out of his or her shell. It motivates the individual to speak about goals, ambitions and likely solutions to the problems that is the source of the anxiety disorder. This a great benefit of anxiety group therapy over individual treatments.
Unluckily there are some obvious disadvantages that anxiety group therapy has over personalized treatment. Due to its character, a group setting might limit the therapist to approach the participants just in general, contrary to individual solutions required by each patient. Additionally, these settings might limit the time the therapist can find to deal with everyone’s distinctive problem appropriately. This can cause a feeling of being overlooked.
Because of this reason, group anxiety therapy programs are usually run in conjunction with individual sessions with a health care professional. Each patient is taken out of the group for a specific time each day to get his or her own advice by a therapist or a licensed counselor. Themes that cannot be adequately handled in a group setting are discussed there, such as the individual’s medication. The combination of anxiety group therapy and individual therapy will insure that all the patient’s requirements are met.