Opinion: Group therapy can improve mental health care access

Dr. Brandan Gremminger

As the stigma around seeking mental health care continues to decrease, our needs have increased in recent years here in the Ozarks and across the U.S., and the demand is leading therapists nationwide to experience longer backlogs. Fortunately, there are many ways to receive immediate care and connect with a professional if you’re in crisis, whether it’s by calling or texting 988 or by seeking care at community behavioral crisis centers.  

We also want people to receive care as soon as possible before they reach a crisis state. To do that, clients and clinicians alike need to continue to expand their definitions of what top-quality therapy looks like. And a growing body of research shows that it looks like group therapy. 

If you, a loved one, a close friend or a co-worker ever find yourself in need of professional counseling and are presented with a longer than desired wait time to receive one-on-one care, I encourage you to ask your health care providers if there are group treatment options available, if they don’t tell you about those opportunities first. The more comfortable our communities become with small-group treatment settings, with which there is more immediate access to care and the possibility of more individuals healed, the sooner we will see fewer access to care issues locally and nationally.  

Group therapy has been around for decades, but if I asked you to close your eyes and picture a therapy session, odds are you’d envision it the way therapy is most often presented in popular culture – a therapist with a notepad, a client on a couch. Yes, individual therapy often looks something like that, and invaluable healing happens in one-on-one sessions. However, therapy effectiveness occurs by way of more than one method of administration. Research published in the American Journal of Psychotherapy shows group sessions can be just as effective as one-on-one therapy to treat depression, anxiety, trauma, eating disorders, personality disorders, PTSD, chronic pain, substance use disorders and many other conditions people often seek help to address.  

Both in and outside of the behavioral health industry, there have been some long-held stigmas about group therapy being a lesser form of treatment than one-on-one. Those views are fortunately falling by the wayside as data tells us a different story. Brigham Young University Department of Psychology’s Gary Burlingame, a longtime group therapy researcher, led a meta-analysis of 46 randomized clinical trials in 2016, and found that there was “zero difference between individual and group therapy across multiple disorders,” according to the American Psychological Association.  

Additionally, the group dynamic can offer someone going through a traumatic experience reassurance through a key healing element they may not find the same way in a one-on-one setting – the discovery that they are not alone in their suffering. At a time when the U.S. Surgeon General is raising alarms about the epidemic of loneliness and isolationism, spending dedicated time addressing collective issues in a group of confidants can be transformative and therapeutic for someone who thinks their challenges are unique to them.  

Most therapy is still conducted in a one-on-one setting in the U.S., including at a rate of about 95% to 5% in private practice. In the aftermath of the pandemic, as record numbers of people across all social and age demographics sought professional help, about seven out 10 psychologists said their wait times had grown longer, according to the APA. If just 10% of our country’s unmet needs were met in group settings, here is how big that impact would be, according to a 2023 study published in the APA Journal:  

• About 3.3 million more Americans would receive mental health treatment 
• The need to train and add more therapists to the workforce – we’re currently at about a 34,500 deficit of providers – would be significantly reduced 
• A savings of roughly $5.6 billion in mental health care costs would be realized, in part because of getting people care earlier in the process of seeking it 

Group therapy advocates refer to it as a “Triple E” treatment, because it’s efficient, it’s effective and it’s equivalent, meaning it offers the same type of results you are going to receive in an individual setting. We as mental health providers need to continue driving this message home to people seeking treatment, and we need to continue to ramp up our offerings of group therapy. And if you or a loved one are presented with an option of receiving group treatment sooner than you can access one-on-one care, please know the research shows you aren’t settling for less.  

Dr. Brandan Gremminger has been a licensed psychologist in Missouri for over 10 years and a member of the Burrell Behavioral Health team since 2017, most recently in the role of executive vice president of clinical operations. He can be reached at brandan.gremminger@burrellcenter.com.