Adult - a group addressing relationships (behavior change) mental illness

Group Work
Author’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Group Work
Course Project Group’s Overview
Family, marriage and children are the basic institutions of society and as long as this building block is maintained, the society may function consistently. Sometimes, the same institution is jeopardized by separation, domestic problems and divorce. Mending family relationships is one of the crucial tasks of a counselor. This importance lies in the fact that broken families do not only affect the husband and the wife or other couples, but also the children themselves. Research finds that children in broken families are more likely to experience socio-economic, psychological, and emotional problems in the long-term duration (Härkönen, Bernardi & Boertien, 2017). So, this creates vital importance for all counselors to ensure that couples consider marital separation as a last resort. Accordingly, this group activity would focus on couples that are on the verge of ‘breaking up’ and who have not yet gone through counseling. The group will be conducted on 8 to 12 members. The group will be conducted on the basis of a world-widely used therapy i.e. cognitive-behavioural theory which emphasizes people’s thinking patterns (Chand & Huecker, 2018). The theoretical basis will help change the members’ emotions and behaviors by changes in their cognitive patterns. It will provide a brief measure to handle the group’s present situation by emphasizing a problem-solving attitude. CBT has been used aggressively with couples both in individual therapy as well as group interventions (Taheri, Zeinalzadeh, Ghanbarpour & Taheri, 2013; Mosalanejad, Koolaee & Jamali, 2012; Nilforooshan, Ahmadi, Abedi & Ahmadi, 2006). For the current group, short-term goals will be to:
* Promote understanding between couples and enhance effective verbal and non-verbal communication
* Discover and disintegrate misunderstandings between couples
* Creating a sense of belongingness among the members and eliminating feelings of loneliness by sharing each other’s stories
* Devising and suggesting adaptive and healthy solutions depending on members’ experiences and opinions
* Formulating a behavioral agenda for the couples to follow according to their needs and wants
Pre-Group Process
Care and precision will help in recruiting members for the group. A specific inclusion/exclusion criterion will be formed in order to create uniformity and relevance between the group members. Couples will be selected who are willing to file for a divorce or are separated. They will be included in the group if they have one or more biological child. Age, socio-economic class, ethnicity, religion, and the residential area will be matched to create similarity in group characteristics. The exclusion criteria will specify the degree of therapy needed for the individual. If a couple wants to receive therapy but demonstrates symptoms beyond the group’s agenda, he/she will be adequately guided for alternative interventions as well as referral to concerned departments may be made. The members that are to be included in the study may be selected from psychiatric clinics, social support de...