Emotion-focused Group Therapy as a training intervention in a nonclinical sample of graduate students: a feasibility study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Emotion-focused group therapy (EFT-G) has only been formulated in the last decade and there is little evidence regarding its applicability. Our study aimed to investigate the feasibility of EFT-G in university students and exploring helpful and hindering events of EFT-G from the participants’ point of view. A pre-formed cohort of students (n = 16) within the same class participated in the quasi-experimental study without a control group. They completed 12 sessions of a modified version of the EFT-G. Participants were administered outcome measures at the first and last sessions. After each session, the participants reported their experiences using the HAT form. Pre-post quantitative outcome analysis results revealed a statistically significant but not clinically reliable decrease in emotion regulation difficulties and an improvement in self-compassion and subjective satisfaction with life. The results of the qualitative analysis revealed that helpful and hindering events were organized around a cluster related to the students’ experiences of themselves (e.g. Developing self-understanding, Feelings of empowerment) or a cluster related to other students in the group (e.g. Seeing others’ perspectives, Self-disclosure difficulties). The main limitations of the results are a lower adherence to the original EFT-G model and the characteristics of the group sample (e.g. preexisting class of students).