Evaluation and Research in Group Psychotherapy. An Italian Contribution

Abstract

This paper presents some key findings in group therapy research and evaluation, and future directions of research in this field. Interest has been focused on the understanding of the clinical therapeutic process and on the possibility of studying it from a scientific point of view. The perspective is to increase the clinical relapse of empirical research on psychotherapy, promoting close integration between the work of clinicians, engaged in the real experience of treating patients, and researchers, interested in providing useful and scientifically based tools for the understanding of the therapeutic work. We present the essential lines of the work produced by the research group of the Department of Psychology, University of Palermo and the Laboratory of Group Analysis of Palermo. In particular, we will propose the main theoretical and methodological elaborations on group psychotherapy research, and the results of Italian studies that demonstrate the clinical efficacy of group psychotherapy.