Jackson Memorial - Group Therapy?

It has been suggested by some media, including the San Jose Mercury News, that yesterday's Michael Jackson memorial was a sort of global "group therapy session."

Mental health professionals, what do you think?

Post your comments!

Group Therapy for Pre-Schoolers?

Okay, boys and girls, gather 'round, it's circle-time...no wait, it's Group Therapy!! The London Telegraph is reporting that some pre-schools are using circle time as a place for children to share their problems. And one of these pre-schools even set up a "calming tent" for frustrated children to settle down. The children are being taught to listen and respond with empathy to their classmates' problems. Wow -- we knew Group Therapy was powerful, but who knew that it could be implemented so early in life!!

You can read the full article in the London Telegraph here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5612434/Four-year-olds-given-therapy-to-improve-behaviour.html

For listings of hundreds of Therapy Groups around the U.S. (sorry, none are for pre-schoolers yet!), visit FindGroupTherapy.Com at www.findgrouptherapy.com

Southern California Heats Up on FindGroupTherapy.Com

Have you logged on to FindGroupTherapy.Com recently? If you're searching for therapy groups in the Los Angeles, San Diego, Inland Empire, or other Southern California areas, you'll find dozens of them now listed.

Recently added therapy groups include: Adult Children of Narcissists; Women with Trans-Gender Partner Group; Survivor's Group; Children's Behavior and Anger Management Group; and many others.

Hey, Southern California therapists -- are you running a group? Why isn't it listed at FindGroupTherapy.Com? Your colleagues and clients will look for you here -- will they find you????

Group Therapy with At-Risk Teens

A MedPage article today says that group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may help prevent depression in at-risk teens! Read the full article here: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Depression/14490

New Therapy Groups at FindGroupTherapy.Com

In the last few days, we've seen a bunch of new therapy groups show up on the Web site. Here's a sampling: Self Confidence and Better Relationships; Caring for Yourself, Caring for Your Elder; Chronic Medical Pain and Illness Support Group; a Therapy Group for Therapists; a Relationships Therapy Group; a Social Skills Group for Teens; Sex and Love in Recovery - A Men's Group; and many others.

Looking forward to letting you know about more interesting groups in the coming week....

ABC News Tackles the Topic of Group Therapy

Group Therapy is in the news quite a bit lately. ABC News recently did an interview with a New York therapist who spoke about why many people are turning to Group Therapy as an alternative to individual, one-on-one sessions. You can check it out here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7382531

At FindGroupTherapy.Com, we know that people are online searching for group therapy and there aren't a whole lot of resources for locating groups all in one location. We're working hard to become *the* source for this! Please remember to link to us and help us grow.

Cheers for tonight,

Linda
Founder and President of FindGroupTherapy.Com
www.findgrouptherapy.com

Man Sent to Prison for Filming Group Therapy Sessions

Now here's something that you don't hear about every day -- a man in Pennsylvania is in prison for secretly filming his group therapy sessions and then posting them on YouTube! Don't go looking for them -- they've been removed. So, how does someone videotape their group therapy without other participants knowing? Apparently, with a cell phone! Wow! Here are a few articles with the details of this story...

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/northampton-county/index.ssf/2009/04/northampton_borough_man_sent_t.html

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-3youtube1.68714571apr25,0,486317.story

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/all-3youtube1.68714571apr25,0,2068378.story

So, What Is This is Group Therapy Stuff, Anyhow?

Our resident experts -- psychotherapists from around the country -- have started posting their articles and research on FindGroupTherapy.Com

Whether you're trying to get up to speed on the topic of Group Therapy, or you just want to deepen your knowledge base, bookmark this page on our site:
http://www.findgrouptherapy.com/home/articles/

I'd recommend starting with Marvin Kaphan's article entitled: "Group Psychotherapy Nuts and Bolts." Marvin discusses structuring psychotherapy groups, establishing rules around "outside contact," making use of "group process," gaining insight, and the cost-effectiveness of group versus individual treatment.

Check it out -- tell your colleagues -- and by all means, submit your own articles if you've written something that our visitors would be interested in seeing!

See ya...

We Were Stumbled Upon

Cool! Someone recommended us on StumbledUpon.Com and as a result, FindGroupTherapy.Com had a record number of visits today! Love it!!

Articles About Group Therapy

Coming later this week at FindGroupTherapy.com - articles about Group Therapy, written by those who run groups. Our expert therapists share their thoughts. Keep an eye on the site -- these will posted within the next few days!

The Uncommon Therapy Group

When you think of group therapy, do you think of the generic "Women's Group" and "Men's Group?" Some of the latest groups added to the FindGroupTherapy.Com Web site include:

• Life is Weird (And I Don't Care): Groups for Teen Boys
  
• Parenting Through Egg Donation
• Professional Single Moms by Choice

Where there's a need, there's a group....and we're happy to be helping spread the word!

Have a great weekend!

Linda
Founder, FindGroupTherapy.Com

Father of Group Therapy Talking in Athens

Wow, how cool it would have been to hear Irv Yalom, the father of Group Therapy, speaking in Athens, Greece. Wish I could have been there!

http://www.ana-mpa.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=7462921&maindocimg=2905265&service=102

Video is Coming to FindGroupTherapy.Com

News, news, news....We're adding Video capabilities that will allow therapists who list with us to include a short clip of themselves talking on their topic of expertise! This should really make a difference in the kinds of results you get from our site. Within another month or so, this will be available to all of our paying subscribers. I've already spoken with therapists who are very excited about the new feature and we're thrilled to be able to offer this service.

In other notes, I've been noticing that FindGroupTherapy.Com is getting lots of visits from New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Virginia, and New Jersey. The visitors from these regions are searching for therapy groups, but we don't currently have much to offer them. Hmm, a great opportunity for mental health professionals in those areas? YES, of course it is! We've got the audience, a targeted demographic group, already searching our site...now we just need to get plenty of groups listed from these states so that have a supply to meet the demand.

Have you linked to FindGroupTherapy.Com from your own Web site? Help us build our traffic by adding a link to us today!! We thank you in advance.

Overlooked by Wall Street Journal

How annoying. The Wall Street Journal published a great article this morning about Group Therapy, and when they talked about "how to find a group," they didn't mention FindGroupTherapy.Com as a resource. I have contacted the editor to see if there's anything we can do to get recognized by them. Stay tuned!

Categorizing Mental Illness?

An interesting question came up today from one of the therapists who lists groups at FindGroupTherapy.com -- he wanted to know if I would add a category called "Severe Mental Illness." I felt a little uncomfortable with this. I wanted to think about it first. I wondered, for instance, how will we define "severe" if we decide to add this category? And how do we prevent therapists from over-labeling certain disorders as severe, and listing them under this category?

I also wondered whether patients would be offended by this term. Or if therapists dealing with severely ill patients would propose other categories that are less pathologizing.

Or am I over-reacting to this term? I put the question out on a few mailing lists for mental health professionals and I'll be curious to see what kinds of responses I get! Subscribe to this blog to stay updated on this topic.

If you have something to add to this discussion, please be sure to add your comment here!

Tracking Your Group Referrals from FindGroupTherapy.Com

So, have you received any referrals this month from FindGroupTherapy.Com? If not, how do you know? One of the things that is difficult about tracking is that the following situations commonly occur:

1.) You'll get a new group member and you'll forget to ask where they found you. (don't forget to ask!!)

2.) You'll get a new group member and ask where they found you, and they'll say "on the Internet" because they can't remember *where* on the Internet -- they just remember Googling the topic. Well, that's a problem because maybe they found you on FindGroupTherapy.Com and maybe not. There's no real way to know.

3.) Your new member says: My therapist told me about your group. Well, guess what....at least 50% (if not more) of our Web site traffic comes from other therapists looking for groups for their clients. So if someone's therapist referred them, it's quite possible that the therapist found out about you from FindGroupTherapy.Com

If you're a GOLD member on our site, you have access to a "hits counter" that tells you how many people each day are viewing your group listing. Keep an eye on this number....if you're getting lots and lots of page view, but no phone calls, you may need to consider adding some new text to your group description.....or, you may need to do some better tracking of the inquiries that come in about your group! Phone still not ringing? Hmm....there's still that reality about the current economic climate. Hang tight...things will cycle back into better times soon (we hope!)

Signing off for now....Linda

Working on Google Rankings

Great news for all of the Bay Area therapists who advertise on FindGroupTherapy.Com...

We're coming up in the #1 slot on Google when you search for the following keywords and phrases: find group therapy, group therapy bay area, group therapy oakland, group therapy berkeley, group therapy san francisco, group therapy san jose, and many others.

This is exciting and it's increasing traffic to the site! We're also getting more and more of you who are linking to us from your own sites, and this too helps to boost our rankings, our credibility, and our group listings.

One of the things I'm hoping to add to the site very soon -- Podcasts! Therapists with group listings on FindGroupTherapy.Com would be able to include audio or video Podcasts of themselves talking about their topic of expertise. Look for this as well as other bells and whistles coming soon.........

Web Site Stats for February

Wow, we're off and running. FindGroupTherapy.Com received 9,122 page views in the month of February! We're pretty happy with that statistic, and expect to see it grow in the coming months. That's a lot of bang for the buck (where else can you get an entire year of marketing to your direct target market for just $139?)

Top 3 categories of groups people searched for on the site in February were Divorce, Depression, and Women's Issues. Other popular categories included DBT/CBT, Panic/Anxiety, Social Skills, and Mindfulness.

Interesting that in the last week, the new groups that were added included "Recession Blues," led by Aresu Kehlhofer, a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist; and "Stress and Worry Group for Women" led by Lisa Brookes Kift, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. Certainly these are the types of groups that are needed in this time of economic downturn.

We're wondering what new groups to expect on the site THIS WEEK! Stay tuned....

Well, our expansion is underway. FindGroupTherapy.Com now has a few groups in New York, Georgia, and Washington. After a huge success in California (hundreds of therapists and nearly a thousand groups have listed on the site over the last 3 years!), we've opened registrations to the entire United States.

We're hoping to fill up the site with group listings from all over the U.S. It would be great if we could list 300 groups in every major metro area....that's what we're aiming for!

Be sure to pass along the link to any of your friends or colleagues in the mental health or medical fields. And we'd love it if you would link to us from your page as well....just point to: http://www.findgrouptherapy.com

Happy Sunday!