Group Therapy Paper

INTRODUCTION
My research is on group work for children that are victims of sexual abuse. This topic is very important as there is such a high number of children that are sexually abused in the US every day. According to Child Sexual Abuse Statistics (2012), approximately 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys are reported to have been sexually assaulted before the age of 17 (p.1). This number is expected to be much higher, because often times the abuse has not been reported. Being sexually abused often times, gives the victim a lower self- esteem and/or self-worth and these feelings can potentially lead to self-harm, suicidal thoughts or actions. Without proper treatment provided, many of these children will grow up, not learning how to work through
According to Reeker, Ensing & Elliot (1997), “While many treatment options are being pursued, group therapy is emerging as a treatment of choice for child sexual abuse victims for a number of reasons (p. 2)”. While Group therapy is not the only way to help a child that has been sexually abused, there are many beneficial gains from group therapy. While individual counseling, and a strong social support group is most helpful for a child through all of the stages of healing, group therapy is also beneficial to the child, in many stages. Group therapy can help to educate, find coping strategies, find others that can relate, and it also helps the child in many other ways. Families of children who are sexually abused often don’t know how to talk or deal with this sensitive issue. Group therapy can also help them, in learning to support the child, and this will be talked about later on, under the topic of Support groups. Group therapy can also address issues of things such as the child feeling isolated, which is much more difficult to do in individual counseling. Another benefit to group therapy is that it is cost effective. As some of the reasons why group counseling has emerged as the treatment of choice, we will now talk about the different types of counseling groups and how they are most effective in helping
Educational groups are groups where the social worker or professional, will lead a group by providing information and then having the group members discuss their reactions, thoughts and comments. The leader actually has a dual role in not only being the educator of this group but also in facilitating the discussion. Educational groups are not usually a continuing type of group. Usually these groups will meet for a number of weeks or months for an hour or so, or even meet just one or two times. This depends on the amount of information the group needs to learn in order to help them and how much they already know. These types of groups have the purpose of educating group members on a topic and are not directed as much to the feeling or behavior. Many people often get educational groups and psychoeducational groups mixed up with one another. Psychoeducational groups are more facilitated toward the individual growth through education and therapy (Furman, Bender & Rowan, 2014, p.